Читать книгу Captivity - Leonora Eyles - Страница 6

"I'm going to tell the others. I'm going to testify to the power of His might," he said just as grimly, gripping his stiff, cold hands together.

"Yell be getting upset, Andrew, an' then we'll be having a time with ye," said Aunt Janet.

"I'll not be getting upset. I'll just be dying," he said gravely, and, calling Marcella, sent her to the village, summoning all the people to come up to the farm on All Souls' Night at seven o'clock.

"I must tell them, Marcella," he said passionately, pleading for her understanding which she could not give, for she could not understand in the least. "I have never done anything for anyone. I must do something."

"I'm afraid you'll be worse for it, father," she said, hesitant. "And so is Aunt Janet—poor Aunt Janet. She's so anxious about you, and she's so tired, you know."

He shook that thought off impatiently.

"I'll be master in my own house," he cried, with some little return to the old Andrew. "I know it will make me worse! I know I'm dying! There, I ought not to frighten you, Marcella! I've frightened you enough in my life. But surely when I've lived for myself I can die for others."

And she knew that it was no use talking to him. Indeed, she would not have dared to cross his will. In the night he prayed about it.

"Lord, I must tell these others how I set beasts in Thy way when Thou wouldn't have made my life Thy path. I must tell them how I never knew liberty till Thou hadst made me Thy slave, how I never knew lightness till I carried Thy cross, how I was hungering and thirsting until I was fed with Thy Body and Blood—"

He broke off and talked to Marcella, words that seemed eerie and terrible to her.

"To-morrow, Marcella, is the day when the ruin came on Lashnagar. To-morrow I shall die—"

"Oh, father!" she cried helplessly.

"I was once His enemy, Marcella. I must let them see me at His feet now, kissing His hand—His man—the King's man—"

He brooded for an hour, gasping for breath. Marcella felt worn out mentally and physically. Her eyes ached for want of sleep, she felt the oppression and burden of the atmosphere that seemed full of ghosts and fears, and to add to her misery she was having her first taste of pain in a crazing attack of neuralgia. Anniversaries, to a mind stored with legend and superstition, have immense signification. She felt that her father's prediction of his death on All Souls' Day was quite reasonable. But none the less fear was penetrating through her mists of weariness and fatalism, hand in hand with overwhelming pity.

"I shall die to-morrow, Marcella. He gave His body and blood. In the end that is all one can do."

In the afternoon she went to bed, worn out. Jean had made some sort of burning plaster with brown paper and something that smelt pleasantly aromatic. It eased the pain of her face and sent her to sleep. Her father had told her calmly that he was going to be dressed and meet the villagers downstairs. He seemed almost himself as he ordered her to take his old worn clothes from the press and lay them on a chair by his bed. She did not expostulate; no one thought of expostulating with Andrew Lashcairn.

It was dark when she wakened and dressed hurriedly. Running down to the kitchen to tell Jean the pleasant effects of her plaster she found it was half-past six.

"Andrew Lashcairn's doon," said Jean, looking scared.

"Who helped him?" asked Marcella, lifting the lid of the teapot that stood on the hearth. She poured into it some water from the singing kettle, and after a minute poured a cup of weak tea, which she drank thirstily.

"He wasna helpit—not with han's. The mistress was frettin', wonderin' what she'd be tellin' him aboot the furniture i' th' book-room. An' he juist cam' in, luikit roond, and laught. I lighted a fire i' there for him, for it's cauld. But he went off doon the passage, gruppin' his stick."

"Is he lying down? Oh dear, I wish I hadn't slept so long! It would have been better for him if I'd been there with him."

"No, he isna to his bed. He's gone through the green baize door. An' it's a' that dusty! I havena bin in tae clean sin' the day he tuik tae his bed. Always the mistress has said I maun leav' it. An' noo the master's gaun in."

"Never mind, Jean, he won't notice," said Marcella, feeling a little incredulous that Jean should be caring about dust now. It seemed as much out of place as her worrying about the mark the plaster had made on her face. "I'm going to get him out. He'll be frozen in there."

"He cam' in tae me and said that the folks was tae have meat and drink! Meat and drink! An' whaur's it tae come frae?" asked Jean in despair.

Marcella flushed a little then and said quickly:

"I expect he was back in the past, Jean. But perhaps he's more for the folks than meat and drink, really."

But as she ran along the gusty passage to the green baize door all her pride rose savagely to think that guests should come, bidden autocratically to the house, and go away unfed. And that the servant, the one poor staunch, unpaid servant, should grieve about it. But she soon lost that thought as she knocked at the green baize door and could get no answer.

"Father! Yell be cold in there. Do come out!"

She waited, and at last he answered her steadily and clearly.

"I'm coming at the right time, Marcella. I have my watch."

"But you'll be so cold," she protested.

"I'll be colder yet, soon," he said calmly, and she was forced to go away. She guessed that Andrew's sense of dramatic fitness made him wish to make his last entry on the stage alone. So she went back to her room and stood looking out over Lashnagar, where the autumn mists stalked and mowed at each other and fluttered and jostled and fought.

Before seven o'clock the book-room was full of people, soaked through with the mist. They were the people Marcella had known all her life—fisher-folk, farm labourers, crofters—and she felt a momentary exultant pride to think that, at a word from her father, they had thronged to his house. There seemed something fitting in their coming on All Souls' Night into this bare room with the tattered pennant and the crackling wood fire that flickered on their weather-beaten faces. Their coming obediently to be talked to by her father for the good of their souls gave her a sense of savage exaltation for the moment. Then she saw Hunchback Wullie and Tammas and Jock, and went across to talk to them.

"Is the Lashcairn better, then?" asked Wullie. She shook her head.

"He says he's going to die to-night, Wullie—All Souls' Night," she said in a low voice.

Wullie nodded comprehension.

Aunt Janet came into the room, her thin face set and grim, her rusty dress of old black satin all cracking, and her great cairngorm brooch marking her from the rest in capes and homespun. They drew away from her; she had never tried to associate with them; in her detachment she had never been human to them as Andrew had been in his wildness and his weakness, and now she walked silently across the room and sat down. The firelight shone out fiercely as she savagely poked the logs, and with a motion ordered young Jock, who stood near, to throw more wood to the flames. It shone on gnarled hands gripping gnarled sticks, on rugged, ruddy faces, on white and sandy hair, on bright blue eyes, old and young. And then the door opened sharply and Andrew Lashcairn stood there, leaning on his stick.

Everyone but Aunt Janet stared at him as the firelight flamed up to blue and purple flame, lighting his gaunt face. But Aunt Janet, like a fate, sat gazing up the misty side of Lashnagar through the uncovered window. Andrew stood still, looking from one to the other. Then he took two steps forward.

"Jamie Mactavish and Andrew Gray are not here," he said sternly, as though he were a schoolmaster calling the roll. Explanations of the absence murmured out and he came inside, pushing the door to.

Marcella, standing by Wullie, was shivering with nervous dread, and suddenly noting his red-rimmed eyes, blazing and wild, she clutched Wullie's arm.

"Wullie—look at him!" she whispered.

"He's been at the bar'l," muttered Wullie, and with a cry she started forward. But Wullie caught her back gently.

"He knows what he's daein', lassie," he whispered, watching Andrew's face expectantly, and the girl stood petrified beside him. It came to her very certainly that her father had realized he had not strength to make what he called his allegiance to God, and that at the last he had sought the momentary strength of the whisky that he knew would shatter his glass heart.

"That's why he knew he would die to-day," her voice whispered, choked in tears. She felt that she was in the grip of things that were bending and breaking her life as they liked.

And then her father spoke, letting his stick clatter to the ground, and lifting his swollen white hands.

"Friends," he said loudly, "ye have all known me in the old days. I asked ye here to-night to tell ye how I went along the Damascus road and cast my burden on the Lord. … He is not hard to deal with. … There's beasts in us, all of us. They lift their heads out of us and jabber and clamour at us; they tear at us with their claws, but if we throw ourselves on God's strength He crushes the life out of the beasts. We can do nothing till we stop fighting and lean on Him. He is kinder than all our hopes, kinder than all our fears—"

His voice stopped with shot-like suddenness and his hands fell to his side as he swayed. Marcella, Wullie and several others rushed to his side. He fell, dragging the hunchback with him. His eyes, not blazing now, but dimming as quickly as though veils had been drawn across them, sought Marcella as he struggled for breath.

"Father—dear," she said, putting her arm under his grey head as Aunt Janet walked across the room. "Dear—" she whispered, almost shyly, for it was a word that she never used except in whispers to her mother.

"I knew we'd have a doing with ye, Andrew," said Aunt Janet, bending stiffly in her satin frock. He could not hear. He looked at her and turned to Marcella again.

"If ye—" he began, and suddenly felt very heavy on the girl's supporting arm.

The people crept away talking quietly then. It seemed right that Andrew Lashcairn had died in the midst of them all on All Souls' Night.