From that day Arctura’s search took a new departure. It is strange how often one may hear a thing, yet never have really heard it! The heart can hear only what it is capable of hearing; therefore “the times of this ignorance God winked at;” but alas for him who will not hear what he is capable of hearing!
His failure to get word or even sight of Eppy, together with some uneasiness at the condition in which her grandfather continued, induced lord Forgue to accept the invitation—which his father had taken pains to have sent him—to spend three weeks or a month with a relative in the north of England. He would gladly have sent a message to Eppy before he went, but had no one he could trust with it: Davie was too much under the influence of his tutor! So he departed without sign, and Eppy soon imagined he had deserted her. For a time her tears flowed yet more freely, but by and by she began to feel something of relief in having the matter settled, for she could not see how they were ever to be married. She would have been content to love him always, she said to herself, were there no prospect of marriage, or even were there no marriage in question; but would he continue to care for her love? She did not think she could expect that. So with many tears she gave him up—or thought she did. He had loved her, and that was a grand thing!
There was much that was good, and something that was wise in the girl, notwithstanding her folly in allowing such a lover. The temptation was great: even if his attentions were in their nature but transient, they were sweet while they passed. I doubt if her love was of the deepest she had to give; but who can tell? A woman will love where a man can see nothing lovely. So long as she is able still to love, she is never quite to be pitied; but when the reaction comes—?
So the dull days went by.
But for lady Arctura a great hope had begun to dawn—the hope, namely, that the world was in the hand, yea in the heart of One whom she herself might one day see, in her inmost soul, and with clearest eyes, to be Love itself—not a love she could not care for, but the very heart, generating centre, embracing circumference, and crown of all loves.
Donal prayed to God for lady Arctura, and waited. Her hour was not yet come, but was coming! Everyone that is ready the Father brings to Jesus: the disciple is not greater than his master, and must not think to hasten the hour, or lead one who is not yet taught of God; he must not be miserable about another as if God had forgotten him. Strange helpers of God we shall be, if, thinking to do his work, we act as if he were neglecting it! To wait for God, believing it his one design to redeem his creatures, ready to put the hand to, the moment his hour strikes, is the faith fit for a fellow-worker with him!
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE CASTLE-ROOF.
One stormy Friday night in the month of March, when a bitter east wind was blowing, Donal, seated at the plain deal-table he had got Mrs. Brookes to find him that he might use it regardless of ink, was drawing upon it a diagram, in quest of a simplification for Davie, when a sudden sense of cold made him cast a glance at his fire. He had been aware that it was sinking, but, as there was no fuel in the room, had forgotten it again: it was very low, and he must at once fetch both wood and coal! In certain directions and degrees of wind this was rather a ticklish task; but he had taken the precaution of putting up here and there a bit of rope. Closing the door behind him to keep in what warmth he might, and ascending the stairs a few feet higher, he stepped out on the bartizan, and so round the tower to the roof. There he stood for a moment to look about him.
It was a moonlit night, so far as the clouds, blown in huge and almost continuous masses over the heavens, would permit the light of the moon to emerge. The roaring of the sea came like a low rolling mist across the flats. The air gloomed and darkened and lightened again around him, as the folds of the cloud-blanket overhead were torn, or dropped trailing, or gathered again in the arms of the hurrying wind. As he stood, it seemed suddenly to change, and take a touch of south in its blowing. The same instant came to his ear a loud wail: it was the ghost-music! There was in it the cry of a discord, mingling with a wild rolling change of harmonies. He stood “like one forbid,” and listened with all his power. It came again, and again, and was more continuous than he had ever heard it before. Here was now a chance indeed of tracing it home! As a gaze-hound with his eyes, as a sleuth-hound with his nose, he stood ready to start hunting with his listing listening ear. The seeming approach and recession of the sounds might be occasioned by changes in their strength, not by any change of position!
“It must come from somewhere on the roof!” he said, and setting down the pail he had brought, he got on his hands and knees, first to escape the wind in his ears, and next to diminish its hold on his person. Over roof after roof he crept like a cat, stopping to listen every time a new gush of the sound came, then starting afresh in the search for its source. Upon a great gathering of roofs like these, erected at various times on various levels, and with all kinds of architectural accommodations of one part to another, sound would be variously deflected, and as difficult to trace as inside the house! Careless of cold or danger, he persisted, creeping up, creeping down, over flat leads, over sloping slates, over great roofing stones, along low parapets, and round ticklish corners—following the sound ever, as a cat a flitting unconscious bird: when it ceased, he would keep slowly on in the direction last chosen. Sometimes, when the moon was more profoundly obscured, he would have to stop altogether, unable to get a peep of his way.