Chapter IX

The White People

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and his mother came. It was
even more beautiful than I had thought it would be. They arrived
late in the afternoon, and when I took them out upon the terrace the
sun was reddening the moor, and even the rough, gray towers of the
castle were stained rose-color. There was that lovely evening sound
of birds twittering before they went to sleep in the ivy. The
glimpses of gardens below seemed like glimpses of rich tapestries set
with jewels. And there was such stillness! When we drew our three
chairs in a little group together and looked out on it all, I felt as
if we were almost in heaven.

"Yes! yes!" Hector said, looking slowly-- round; "it is all
here."

"Yes," his mother added, in her lovely, lovely voice. "It is
what made you Ysobel."

It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that deep, quiet
way, and to think that it was part of me and I a part of it. The
climbing moon was trembling with beauty. Tender evening airs
quivered in the heather and fern, and the late birds called like
spirits.

Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn had held me in her arms
under the apple-tree while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her
son as if he were an archangel walking on the earth. Perhaps my
thoughts were exaggerated, but it seemed so marvelous that he should
be moving among us, doing his work, seeing and talking to his
friends, and yet that he should know that at any moment the great
change might come and he might awaken somewhere else, in quite
another place. If he had been like other men and I had been like
other girls, I suppose that after that night when I heard the truth I
should have been plunged into the darkest woe and have almost sobbed
myself to death. Why did I not? I do not know except --except that
I felt that no darkness could come between us because no darkness
could touch him. He could never be anything but alive alive. If I
could not see him it would only be because my eyes were not clear and
strong enough. I seemed to be waiting for something. I wanted to
keep near him.

I was full of this feeling as we sat together on the terrace and
watched the moon. I could scarcely look away from him. He was
rather pale that evening, but there seemed to be a light behind his
pallor, and his eyes seemed to see so much more than the purple and
yellow of the heather and gorse as they rested on them.

After I had watched him silently for a little while I leaned
forward and pointed to a part of the moor where there was an unbroken
blaze of gorse in full bloom like a big patch of gold.

"That is where I was sitting when Wee Brown Elspeth was first
brought to me," I said.

He sat upright and looked. "Is it?" he answered. "Will you
take me there to-morrow? I have always wanted to see the place."

"Would you like to go early in the morning? The mist is more
likely to be there then, as it was that day. It is so mysterious and
beautiful. Would you like to do that?" I asked him.

"Better than anything else!" he said. "Yes, let us go in the
morning."

"Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this evening," I said. "I
feel as if--" I broke off and began again. "I have a puzzled
feeling about her. This afternoon I found some manuscript pushed
behind a book on a high shelf in the library. Angus said he had
hidden it there because it was a savage story he did not wish me to
read. It was the history of the feud between Ian Red Hand and Dark
Malcolm of the Glen. Dark Malcolm's child was called Wee Brown
Elspeth hundreds of years ago-- five hundred, I think. It makes me
feel so bewildered when I remember the one I played with."

"It was a bloody story," he said. "I heard it only a few days
before we met at Sir Ian's house in London."

That made me recall something.

"Was that why you started when I told you about Elspeth?" I
asked.

"Yes. Perhaps the one you played with was a little descendant
who had inherited her name," he answered, a trifle hurriedly. "I
confess I was startled for a moment."

I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed it unconsciously. I
could not help seeing a woesome picture.

"Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her
brown hair spread over her dead father's breast!" I stopped, because
a faint memory came back to me. "Mine," I stammered--"mine--how
strange!--had a great stain on the embroideries of her dress. She
looked at it--and looked. She looked as if she didn't like it--as if
she didn't understand how it came there. She covered it with ferns
and bluebells."

I felt as if I were being drawn away into a dream. I made a
sudden effort to come back. I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped
my hand, sitting upright.

"I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about her," I said. "Of
course, they must have known. I wonder why I never thought of asking
questions before."

It was a strange look I met when I involuntarily turned toward
him--such an absorbed, strange, tender look!

I knew he sat quite late in the library that night, talking to
Angus after his mother and I went to our rooms. Just as I was
falling asleep I remember there floated through my mind a vague
recollection of what Angus had said to me of asking his advice about
something; and I wondered if he would reach the subject in their
talk, or if they would spend all their time in poring over
manuscripts and books together.

The moor wore its most mysterious look when I got up in the
early morning. It had hidden itself in its softest snows of white,
swathing mist. Only here and there dark fir-trees showed themselves
above it, and now and then the whiteness thinned or broke and
drifted. It was as I had wanted him to see it--just as I had wanted
to walk through it with him.

We had met in the hall as we had planned, and, wrapped in our
plaids because the early morning air was cold, we tramped away
together. No one but myself could ever realize what it was like. I
had never known that there could be such a feeling of companionship
in the world. It would not have been necessary for us to talk at all
if we had felt silent. We should have been saying things to each
other without words. But we did talk as we walked--in quiet voices
which seemed made quieter by the mist, and of quiet things which such
voices seemed to belong to.

We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where a path led at
once on to the moor. Part of the park itself had once been moorland,
and was dark with slender firs and thick grown with heather and
broom. On the moor the mist grew thicker, and if I had not so well
known the path we might have lost ourselves in it. Also I knew by
heart certain little streams that rushed and made guiding sounds
which were sometimes loud whispers and sometimes singing babbles.
The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather was in our nostrils; as we
climbed we breathed its freshness.

"There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it all," Hector
MacNairn said to me. His voice was rather like his mother's. It
always seemed to say so much more than his words.

"We might be ghosts," I answered. "We might be some of those
the mist hides because they like to be hidden."

"You would not be afraid if you met one of them?" he said.

"No. I think I am sure of that. I should feel that it was only
like myself, and, if I could hear, might tell me things I want to
know."

"What do you want to know?" he asked me, very low. "You!"

"Only what everybody wants to know--that it is really awakening
free, ready for wonderful new things, finding oneself in the midst of
wonders. I don't mean angels with harps and crowns, but beauty such
as we see now; only seeing it without burdens of fears before and
behind us. And knowing there is no reason to be afraid. We have all
been so afraid. We don't know how afraid we have been--of
everything."

I stopped among the heather and threw my arms out wide. I drew
in a great, joyous morning breath.

"Free like that! It is the freeness, the light, splendid
freeness, I think of most."

"The freeness!" he repeated. "Yes, the freeness!"

"As for beauty," I almost whispered, in a sort of reverence for
visions I remembered, "I have stood on this moor a thousand times and
seen loveliness which made me tremble. One's soul could want no more
in any life. But `Out on the Hillside' I knew I was part of it, and
it was ecstasy. That was the freeness."

"Yes--it was the freeness," he answered.

We brushed through the heather and the bracken, and flower-bells
shook showers of radiant drops upon us. The mist wavered and
sometimes lifted before us, and opened up mystic vistas to veil them
again a few minutes later. The sun tried to break through, and
sometimes we walked in a golden haze.

We fell into silence. Now and then I glanced sidewise at my
companion as we made our soundless way over the thick moss. He
looked so strong and beautiful. His tall body was so fine, his
shoulders so broad and splendid! How could it be! How could it be!
As he tramped beside me he was thinking deeply, and he knew he need
not talk to me. That made me glad--that he should know me so well
and feel me so near. That was what he felt when he was with his
mother, that she understood and that at times neither of them needed
words.

Until we had reached the patch of gorse where we intended to end
our walk we did not speak at all. He was thinking of things which
led him far. I knew that, though I did not know what they were.
When we reached the golden blaze we had seen the evening before it
was a flame of gold again, because--it was only for a few
moments--the mist had blown apart and the sun was shining on it.

As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh! how strange and
beautiful it was!--Mr. MacNairn came back. That was what it seemed
to me--that he came back. He stood quite still a moment and looked
about him, and then he stretched out his arms as I had stretched out
mine. But he did it slowly, and a light came into his face.

"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you said and found
himself--the self he knew, but light, free, splendid--remembering all
the ages of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless
plunge, and suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it--how
he would stand and smile! How he would stand and smile!"

Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood
then. Yes, yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of
fear, how he would stand and smile!

He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already
losing its flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again
over it, when I heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It
sounded like the playing of a piper. He did not seem to notice
it.

"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How mysterious it is,
this opening and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us
sit down, Ysobel."

He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the
little strapped basket Jean had made ready for us. He shook the mist
drops from our own plaids, and as I was about to sit down I stopped a
moment to listen.

"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes before," I said.
"What is a piper doing out on the moor so early?"

He listened also. "It must be far away. I don't hear it," he
said. "Perhaps it is a bird whistling."

"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not a bird. It's the
pipes, and playing such a strange tune. There! It has stopped!"

But it was not silent long; I heard the tune begin again much
nearer, and the piper was plainly coming toward us. I turned my
head.

The mist was clearing, and floated about like a thin veil
through which one could see objects. At a short distance above us on
the moor I saw something moving. It was a man who was playing the
pipes. It was the piper, and almost at once I knew him, because it
was actually my own Feargus, stepping proudly through the heather
with his step like a stag on the hills. His head was held high, and
his face had a sort of elated delight in it as if he were enjoying
himself and the morning and the music in a new way. I was so
surprised that I rose to my feet and called to him.

"Feargus!" I cried. "What--"

I knew he heard me, because he turned and looked at me with the
most extraordinary smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced man,
but this smile had a kind of startling triumph in it. He certainly
heard me, for he whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as
triumphant as the smile. But he did not answer, and actually passed
in and out of sight in the mist.

When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too. When I turned to speak
in my surprise, he had fixed on me his watchful look.

"Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!" I exclaimed. "And why
did he pass by in such a hurry without answering? He must have been
to a wedding and have been up all night. He looked--" I stopped a
second and laughed.

"How did he look?" Mr. MacNairn asked.

"Pale! That won't do--though he certainly didn't look ill." I
laughed again. "I'm laughing because he looked almost like one of
the White People."

"Are you sure it was Feargus?" he said.

"Quite sure. No one else is the least like Feargus. Didn't you
see him yourself?"

"I don't know him as well as you do; and there was the mist,"
was his answer. "But he certainly was not one of the White People
when I saw him last night."

I wondered why he looked as he did when he took my hand and drew
me down to my place on the plaid again. He did not let it go when he
sat down by my side. He held it in his own large, handsome one,
looking down on it a moment or so; and then he bent his head and
kissed it long and slowly two or three times.

"Dear little Ysobel!" he said. "Beloved, strange little
Ysobel."

"Am I strange!" I said, softly.

"Yes, thank God!" he answered.

I had known that some day when we were at Muircarrie together he
would tell me what his mother had told me--about what we three might
have been to one another. I trembled with happiness at the thought
of hearing him say it himself. I knew he was going to say it now.

He held my hand and stroked it. "My mother told you,
Ysobel--what I am waiting for?" he said.

"Yes."

"Do you know I love you?" he said, very low.

"Yes. I love you, too. My whole life would have been heaven if
we could always have been together," was my answer.

He drew me up into his arms so that my cheek lay against his
breast as I went on, holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket
and whispering: "I should have belonged to you two, heart and body
and soul. I should never have been lonely again. I should have
known nothing, whatsoever happened, but tender joy."

"Whatsoever happened?" he murmured.

"Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know nothing but tender joy. I
think you can. `Out on the Hillside!' Let us remember."

"Yes, yes," I said; " `Out on the Hillside.' " And our two
faces, damp with the sweet mist, were pressed together.