“If,” said Donal, more for the sake of confirming the earl’s impression that he had a listener, than from any idea that he would listen—“if you mean the object of Nature is to present us with perfection, I cannot allow she does what she intends: you rarely see her produce anything she would herself call perfect. But if her object be to make us behold perfection with the inner eye, this object she certainly does gain, and that just by stopping short of—”
He did not finish the sentence. A sudden change was upon him, absorbing him so that he did not even try to account for it: something seemed to give way in his head—as if a bubble burst in his brain; and from that moment whatever the earl said, and whatever arose in his own mind, seemed to have outward existence as well. He heard and knew the voice of his host, but seemed also in some inexplicable way, which at the time occasioned him no surprise, to see the things which had their origin in the brain of the earl. Whether he went in very deed out with him into the night, he did not know—he felt as if he had gone, and thought he had not—but when he woke the next morning in his bed at the top of the tower, which he had no recollection of climbing, he was as weary as if he had been walking the night through.
CHAPTER XXXI.
BEWILDERMENT.
His first thought was of a long and delightful journey he had made on horseback with the earl—through scenes of entrancing interest and variety,—with the present result of a strange weariness, almost misery. What had befallen him? Was the thing a fact or a fancy? If a fancy, how was he so weary? If a fact, how could it have been? Had he in any way been the earl’s companion through such a long night as it seemed? Could they have visited all the places whose remembrance lingered in his brain? He was so confused, so bewildered, so haunted with a shadowy uneasiness almost like remorse, that he even dreaded the discovery of the cause of it all. Might a man so lose hold of himself as to be no more certain he had ever possessed or could ever possess himself again?
He bethought himself at last that he might perhaps have taken more wine than his head could stand. Yet he remembered leaving his glass unemptied to follow the earl; and it was some time after that before the change came! Could it have been drunkenness? Had it been slowly coming without his knowing it? He could hardly believe it. But whatever it was, it had left him unhappy, almost ashamed. What would the earl think of him? He must have concluded him unfit any longer to keep charge of his son! For his own part he did not feel he was to blame, but rather that an accident had befallen him. Whence then this sense of something akin to shame? Why should he be ashamed of anything coming upon him from without? Of that shame he had to be ashamed, as of a lack of faith in God! Would God leave his creature who trusted in him at the mercy of a chance—of a glass of wine taken in ignorance? There was a thing to be ashamed of, and with good cause!
He got up, found to his dismay that it was almost ten o’clock—his hour for rising in winter being six—dressed in haste, and went down, wondering that Davie had not come to see after him.
In the schoolroom he found him waiting for him. The boy sprang up, and darted to meet him.
“I hope you are better, Mr. Grant!” he said. “I am so glad you are able to be down!”
“I am quite well,” answered Donal. “I can’t think what made me sleep so long. Why didn’t you come and wake me, Davie, my boy?”
“Because Simmons told me you were ill, and I must not disturb you if you were ever so late in coming down.”