Chapter III

The White People

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

It was when I was ten years old that Wee Elspeth ceased coming to
me, and though I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of
grief or final loss. She had only gone somewhere.

It was then that Angus Macayre began to be my tutor. He had
been a profound student and had lived among books all his life. He
had helped Jean in her training of me, and I had learned more than is
usually taught to children in their early years. When a grand
governess was sent to Muircarrie by my guardian, she was amazed at
the things I was familiar with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning
castle and the loneliness of the place and would not stay. In fact,
no governess would stay, and so Angus became my tutor and taught me
old Gaelic and Latin and Greek, and we read together and studied the
ancient books in the library. It was a strange education for a girl,
and no doubt made me more than ever unlike others. But my life was
the life I loved.

When my guardian decided that I must live with him in London and
be educated as modern girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to
him; but before two months had passed my wretchedness had made me so
ill that the doctor said I should go into a decline and die if I were
not sent back to Muircarrie.

"It's not only the London air that seems to poison her," he said
when Jean talked to him about me; "it is something else. She will
not live, that's all. Sir Ian must send her home."

As I have said before, I had been an unattractive child and I
was a plain, uninteresting sort of girl. I was shy and could not
talk to people, so of course I bored them. I knew I did not look
well when I wore beautiful clothes. I was little and unimportant and
like a reed for thinness. Because I was rich and a sort of
chieftainess I ought to have been tall and rather stately, or at
least I ought to have had a bearing which would have made it
impossible for people to quite overlook me. But; any one could
overlook me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped in and out of
places and sat and stared and listened to other people instead of
saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten. It
interested me to watch people if they did not notice me.

Of course, my relatives did not really like me. How could they?
They were busy in their big world and did not know what to do with a
girl who ought to have been important and was not. I am sure that in
secret they were relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.

After that the life I loved went on quietly. I studied with
Angus, and made the book- walled library my own room. I walked and
rode on the moor, and I knew the people who lived in the cottages and
farms on the estate. I think they liked me, but I am not sure,
because I was too shy to seem very friendly. I was more at home with
Feargus, the piper, and with some of the gardeners than I was with
any one else. I think I was lonely without knowing; but I was never
unhappy. Jean and Angus were my nearest and dearest. Jean was of
good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite sufficiently educated to
be my companion as she had been my early governess.

It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely
to the study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone
by.

"She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life
without gathering anything from it."

"This life," she put it, as if I had passed through others
before, and might pass through others again. That was always her way
of speaking, and she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in
it.

"You are a wise woman, Jean," Angus said, looking long at her
grave face. "A wise woman."

He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and
I began to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a
world I did not understand, and many of them I could not endure. But
I persevered, and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in
time I began to feel as if perhaps they were true. My chief
weariness with them came from the way they had of referring to the
things I was so intimate with as though they were only the
unauthenticated history of a life so long passed by that it could no
longer matter to any one. So often the greatest hours of great lives
were treated as possible legends. I knew why men had died or were
killed or had borne black horror. I knew because I had read old
books and manuscripts and had heard the stories which had come down
through centuries by word of mouth, passed from father to son.

But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the
world had begun and would end with him. He knew he was only one, and
part of all the rest. The name I shall give him is Hector MacNairn.
He was a Scotchman, but he had lived in many a land. The first time
I read a book he had written I caught my breath with joy, again and
again. I knew I had found a friend, even though there was no
likelihood that I should ever see his face. He was a great and
famous writer, and all the world honored him; while I, hidden away in
my castle on a rock on the edge of Muircarrie, was so far from being
interesting or clever that even in my grandest evening dress and
tiara of jewels I was as insignificant as a mouse. In fact, I always
felt rather silly when I was obliged to wear my diamonds on state
occasions as custom sometimes demanded.

Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which
were always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his
story was placed--howsoever remote and unknown the scene--it was a
real place, and the people who lived in it were real, as if he had
some magic power to call up human things to breathe and live and set
one's heart beating. I read everything he wrote. I read every word
of his again and again. I always kept some book of his near enough
to be able to touch it with my hand; and often I sat by the fire in
the library holding one open on my lap for an hour or more, only
because it meant a warm, close companionship. It seemed at those
times as if he sat near me in the dim glow and we understood each
other's thoughts without using words, as Wee Brown Elspeth and I had
understood-- only this was a deeper thing.

I had felt near him in this way for several years, and every
year he had grown more famous, when it happened that one June my
guardian, Sir Ian, required me to go to London to see my lawyers and
sign some important documents connected with the management of the
estate. I was to go to his house to spend a week or more, attend a
Drawing-Room, and show myself at a few great parties in a proper
manner, this being considered my duty toward my relatives. These, I
believe, were secretly afraid that if I were never seen their world
would condemn my guardian for neglect of his charge, or would decide
that I was of unsound mind and intentionally kept hidden away at
Muircarrie. He was an honorable man, and his wife was a well-meaning
woman. I did not wish to do them an injustice, so I paid them yearly
visits and tried to behave as they wished, much as I disliked to be
dressed in fine frocks and to wear diamonds on my little head and
round my thin neck.

It was an odd thing that this time I found I did not dread the
visit to London as much as I usually did. For some unknown reason I
became conscious that I was not really reluctant to go. Usually the
thought of the days before me made me restless and low-spirited.
London always seemed so confused and crowded, and made me feel as if
I were being pushed and jostled by a mob always making a tiresome
noise. But this time I felt as if I should somehow find a clear
place to stand in, where I could look on and listen without being
bewildered. It was a curious feeling; I could not help noticing and
wondering about it.

I knew afterward that it came to me because a change was drawing
near. I wish so much that I could tell about it in a better way.
But I have only my own way, which I am afraid seems very like a
school-girl's.

Jean Braidfute made the journey with me, as she always did, and
it was like every other journey. Only one incident made it
different, and when it occurred there seemed nothing unusual in it.
It was only a bit of sad, everyday life which touched me. There is
nothing new in seeing a poor woman in deep mourning.

Jean and I had been alone in our railway carriage for a great
part of the journey; but an hour or two before we reached London a
man got in and took a seat in a corner. The train had stopped at a
place where there is a beautiful and well-known cemetery. People
bring their friends from long distances to lay them there. When one
passes the station, one nearly always sees sad faces and people in
mourning on the platform.

There was more than one group there that day, and the man who
sat in the corner looked out at them with gentle eyes. He had fine,
deep eyes and a handsome mouth. When the poor woman in mourning
almost stumbled into the carriage, followed by her child, he put out
his hand to help her and gave her his seat. She had stumbled because
her eyes were dim with dreadful crying, and she could scarcely see.
It made one's heart stand still to see the wild grief of her, and her
unconsciousness of the world about her. The world did not matter.
There was no world. I think there was nothing left anywhere but the
grave she had just staggered blindly away from. I felt as if she had
been lying sobbing and writhing and beating the new turf on it with
her poor hands, and I somehow knew that it had been a child's grave
she had been to visit and had felt she left to utter loneliness when
she turned away.

It was because I thought this that I wished she had not seemed
so unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and
clung to her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This
one was alive at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its
little face was so wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and
ignore it, as if it were not there. I felt as if she might have left
it behind on the platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it
was almost dragged into the railway carriage with her. When she sank
into her seat she did not even lift the poor little thing into the
place beside her, but left it to scramble up as best it could. She
buried her swollen face in her handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered
way as if she neither saw, heard, nor felt any living thing near
her.

How I wished she would remember the poor child and let it
comfort her! It really was trying to do it in its innocent way. It
pressed close to her side, it looked up imploringly, it kissed her
arm and her crape veil over and over again, and tried to attract her
attention. It was a little, lily-fair creature not more than five or
six years old and perhaps too young to express what it wanted to say.
It could only cling to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg
her to remember that it, at least, was a living thing. But she was
too absorbed in her anguish to know that it was in the world. She
neither looked at nor touched it, and at last it sat with its cheek
against her sleeve, softly stroking her arm, and now and then kissing
it longingly. I was obliged to turn my face away and look out of the
window, because I knew the man with the kind face saw the tears well
up into my eyes.

The poor woman did not travel far with us. She left the train
after a few stations were passed. Our fellow-traveler got out before
her to help her on to the platform. He stood with bared head while
he assisted her, but she scarcely saw him. And even then she seemed
to forget the child. The poor thing was dragged out by her dress as
it had been dragged in. I put out my hand involuntarily as it went
through the door, because I was afraid it might fall. But it did
not. It turned its fair little face and smiled at me. When the kind
traveler returned to his place in the carriage again, and the train
left the station, the black- draped woman was walking slowly down the
platform and the child was still clinging to her skirt.