An Orkney Maid. Amelia E. Barr
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They are full of Presence to me.”
“Presence. What do you mean?”
“Souls.”
“You are a creepy kind of mortal. I think, Ian, if you were not such a godless man, you might have been a saint.”
Macrae drew his lips tight, and then said in detached words––“My father is––sure––I––was––born––at––the––other––end––of––the––measure.”
Then they were in the interior of the cathedral. The light was dim, the silence intense, and both men were profoundly affected by influences unknown and unseen. As they moved slowly forward into the nave, the altar became visible, and in this sacred place of Communion Thora was 55 moving slowly about, leaving beauty and sweetness wherever she lingered.
Her appearance gave both men a shock and both expressed it by a spasmodic breath. They spoke not; they watched her slim, white figure pass to-and-fro with soft and reverent steps, arranging violets and white hyacinths with green moss in the exquisite white Wedgewood. Then with a face full of innocent joy she placed it upon the altar, and for a few moments stood with clasped hands, looking at it.
As she did so, the organist began to practice his Easter music, and she turned her face towards the organ. Then they saw fully a beautiful, almost childlike face transfigured with celestial emotions.
“Let us get out of this,” whispered McLeod. “What business have we here? It is a kind of sacrilege.” And Ian bowed his head and followed him. But it was some minutes ere the every-day world became present to their senses. McLeod was the first to speak:––
“What an experience!” he sighed. “I should not dare to try it often. It would send me into a monastery.”
“Are you a Roman Catholic?”
“What else would I be? When I was a lad, 56 I used to dream of being a monk. It was power I wanted. I thought then, that priests had more power than any other men; as I grew older I found out that it was money that owned the earth.”
“Not so!” said Ian sharply, “ ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.’ I promised to be at Mistress Brodie’s for dinner at one o’clock. What is the time?”
McLeod took out his watch:––“You have twenty minutes,” he said. “I was just going to tell you that the girl we saw in the cathedral is her niece.”
Ian had taken a step or two in the direction of the Brodie house, but he turned his head, and with a bright smile said, “Thank you, Ken!” and McLeod watched him a moment and then with a sigh softly ejaculated: “What a courteous chap he is––when he is in the mood to be courteous––and what a–––when he is not in the mood.”
Ian was at the Brodie house five minutes before one, and he found Mistress Brodie waiting for him. “I am glad that you have kept your tryst,” she said. “We will just have a modest bite now, and we can make up all that is wanting here, at my brother Coll’s, a little later. I have a pleasant 57 invite for yourself. My good sister-in-law has read some of your father’s sermons in the Sunday papers and magazines, and for their sake she will be glad to see you. I just promised for you.”
“Thank you, I shall be glad to go with you,” and it was difficult for him to disguise how more than glad he was to have this opportunity.
“So then, you will put on the best you have with you––the best is none too good to meet Thora in.”
“Thora?”
“Thora Ragnor, my own niece. She is the bonniest and the best girl in Scotland, if you will take me as a judge of girls. ‘Good beyond the lave of girls,’ and so Bishop Hadley asked her special to dress the altar for Easter. He knew there would be no laughing and daffing about the work, if Thora Ragnor had the doing of it.”
“Is there any reason to refrain from laughing and daffing while at that work?”
“At God’s altar there should be nothing but prayer and praise. You know what girls talk and laugh about. If they have not some poor lad to bring to worship, or to scorn, they have no heart to help their hands; and the work is done silent and snappy. They are wishing they were at home, and could get their straight, yellow hair on 58 to crimping pins, because Laurie or Johnny would be coming to see them, it being Saturday night.”
“Then the Bishop thought your niece would be more reverent?”
“He knew she would. He knew also, that she would not be afraid to be in the cathedral by herself, she would do the work with her own hands, and that there would be no giggling and gossiping and no young lads needed to hold vases and scissors and little balls of twine.”
Their “moderate bite” was a pleasant lingering one. They talked of people in Edinburgh with whom they had some kind of a mutual acquaintance, and Mistress Brodie did the most of the talking. She was a charming story-teller, and she knew all the good stories about the University and its great professors. This day she spent the time illustrating John Stuart Blackie taking his ease in a dressing gown and an old straw hat. She made you see the man, and Ian felt refreshed and cheered by the mental vision. As for Lord Roseberry, he really sat at their “modest bite” with them. “You know, laddie,” she said, “Scotsmen take their politics as if they were the Highland fling; and Roseberry was Scotland’s idol. He was an orator who carried every soul with him, 59 whether they wanted to go or not; and I was told by J. M. Barrie, that once when he had fired an audience to the delirium point, an old man in the hall shouted out:––‘I dinna hear a word; but it’s grand; it’s grand!’ ”
They barely touched on Scottish religion. Mistress Brodie easily saw it was a subject her guest did not wish to discuss, and she shut it off from conversation, with the finality of her remark that “some people never understood Scotch religion, except as outsiders misunderstood it. Well, Ian, I will be ready for our visit in about two hours; one hour to rest after eating and a whole hour to dress myself and lecture the lasses anent behaving themselves when they are left to their own idle wishes and wasteful work.”
“Then in two hours I will be ready to accompany you; and in the meantime I will walk over the moor and smoke a cigar.”
“No, no, better go down to the beach and watch the puffins flying over the sea, and the terns fishing about the low lying land. Or you might get a sight of an Arctic skua going north, or a black guillemot with a fish in its mouth flying fast to feed its young. The seaside is the place, laddie! There is something going on there constantly.”
60
So Ian went to the seaside and found plenty of amusement there in watching a family quarrel among the eider ducks, who were feeding on the young mussels attached to the rocks which a low tide had uncovered.
It was a pleasant walk to the Ragnor home, and Rahal and Thora were expecting them. The sitting room was cheery with sunshine and fire glow, Rahal was in afternoon dress and Thora was sitting near the window spinning on the little wheel the marvellously fine threads of wool made from the dwarfish breed of Shetland sheep, and used generally for the knitting of those delicate shawls which rivalled the finest linen laces. On the entrance of her aunt and Ian Macrae she rose and stood by her wheel, until the effusive greetings of the two elder ladies were complete; and Ian was utterly charmed with the picture she made––it was completely different from anything he had ever seen or dreamed about.
The wheel was a pretty one, and was inlaid with some bright metal, and when Thora rose from her chair she was still holding a handful of fine snowy wool. Her blue-robed and blue-eyed loveliness appeared to fill the room as she stood erect and smiling, watching her mother and aunt. 61 But when her aunt stepped forward to introduce Ian to her, she turned the full light of her lovely countenance upon him. Then both wondered where they had met before. Was it in dreams only?
Mother and aunt were soon deep in the fascinating gossip of an Edinburgh winter season, and Thora and Ian went into the greenhouse and the