BOOK ONE. CHAPTER SIX
Julia had a headache; at least it was not actually a headache but a feeling of torpor, caused probably by the thundery weather. Emily said she knew the sensation exactly. ‘You feel,’ she sympathised, ‘like a cottage that has a heavy fall of snow on its thatch.’ Julia said she could not bear to remain in the house, so would come with me for my first lesson from the dominie and perhaps the walk would do her good. Emmy would not accompany us; the next worse thing to being taught Latin yourself, she said, was hearing some one else taught it. She would stay at home and help mamma stitch the new braid on to her old tunic, but she came with us as far as the manse gate which opened on to the road.
Sound took long to carry on the air burdened with the heavy, sweet smells that herald a thunder-storm. A faint mist had crept amongst the trees, filling up the spaces between the branches, so that they looked like spectral things. Shadows dragged on the loch, the mountains bulked forebodingly near, heat smote down from the low sky, and mist unrolled like dust from under the feet of a vast invisible army. Everything looked dead and ghostly, only the human beings were real, alive inhabitants of a dream world—Emmy bidding us good-bye, Julia with her high cheek-bones set well apart, broadening her face, the carter’s boy whistling beside his steaming horse.
We set off briskly along the road towards Barnfingal. I took off my bonnet and felt the sun hot upon the nape of my neck. The darkened landscape was like an old Biblical print in one of papa’s books at home, for the rays of the sun shot down obliquely from behind accumulating clouds, and it was raining in a slanting sheet on the other side of the loch.
We met the Gow Farm children on the brae coming home from school, so knew we were not late. The dominie was waiting for us, with several books he had looked out to discover which was the most suitable for me. I had always taken a delight in Latin and, even when I was quite small, loved translating the simplest sentences. Balbus who built a wall, the humble queen who washed the feet of the sailors, the nameless explorer who set out on a journey, all became personalities to me, and even the bald statement that ground is arable filled me with pleasure. I enjoyed my lesson from the dominie, who was a patient and encouraging teacher, and who secretly gratified me by saying I was further on than he had expected.
While he sat beside me, Julia moved about the schoolroom, reading the initials carved on the benches and looking at the slates piled on the dominie’s desk. My lesson lasted an hour and by the end of that time she was quite ready to be talkative. For want of something better to do she had taken a yellow flower out of a jar and was blowing its tight little buds open.
‘Tell me, Mr MacDonald,’ she asked, her lips curving into her bewitching smile, ‘I have been wondering so much as I listened to your voice from where you come.’
‘My mother came from the Nordeneys,’ he answered as he rose and shut his books. ‘That’s a far cry from here. And my father was a native of Mhorben.’
‘He’s dead then?’
‘They’re both dead—my mother died at my birth and my father some years ago.’
She stood looking up into his face.
‘I feel you were an only child,’ she said, ‘and were brought up by your “lone self”, not in the rough and tumble of a large family.’ She was merely speaking her thoughts, for we all conjectured and made up stories about the people we met.
He smiled and shook his head at her.
‘I was the seventh,’ he said.
‘And your father,’ she questioned instantly, ‘was he a seventh child too?’
‘Yes,’ he replied uneasily. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Ah,’ Julia exclaimed triumphantly, ‘then you will have second sight. What is it Nannie calls it again?—“the vision of the two worlds”.’
He was palpably taken aback and repudiated it hurriedly.
‘But, Mr MacDonald,’ she insisted, ‘a curious thing happened when we were here the other day. You answered a question of mine before I asked it.’
‘Did I?’ he replied, perplexed. ‘I did not notice, I do not recollect. But that is not the second sight.’
‘Perhaps not, but you read thoughts?’
‘Sometimes I can,’ he admitted reluctantly.
There was a pause and then Julia said, ‘That must make you feel very powerful,’ and I saw her colour deepen.
‘I would give much not to be able to do it,’ he said, and he spoke so strenuously for so tranquil a person that I was startled.
‘Why?’ Julia challenged. In an effort to be at ease again, she began to speak rapidly. ‘I would have imagined it would put you in such a strong position—for one thing you will never be surprised at anything you hear and will always be prepared. What does it feel like to read people’s thoughts?’
‘I don’t read them,’ he said, ‘I see them.’
‘See them!’ And when he did not explain, she pressed, ‘How do you mean “see them”?’
‘They come and go before my eyes in pictures.’
I thought it unfair to question one who was so obviously unwilling to answer, but nothing would stay Julia.
‘How strange,’ she remarked. ‘And when you are with several people, what happens then?’
‘Then their thoughts behave mostly like cows all running in wrong directions.’
‘I see,’ Julia said; ‘now I know why you don’t like reading them,’ and her smile looked somehow twisted. ‘You must feel as though you were walking through people. I would have imagined it would be an advantage, not a drawback; that it would have given you a start in life, added something to it.’
‘I think this life is given us to find out how much we can do without.’
‘Nonsense,’ she rallied, her old self once again, ‘we are here to enjoy, to have and to share, not to deny and chill ourselves.’
He did not contradict her but I was aware that he had withdrawn himself from us. He was taller than she and had to gaze down into her eyes which were darkened by the brim of her tilted hat. He was not cadaverous, but his features were those that threw shades on his face. I noticed there were shadows in the pits where his eyes were, in the dent of his chin and the concaves of his nostrils.
BOOK ONE. CHAPTER SEVEN
For the best part of a week we had not been able to leave the house and had spent the days hung with rain alone in the manse with mamma, papa and Nannie, visited only by the irregular mail.
Two unfortunate things happened during that time. Julia had won a playful wager with Edwin Strathern, who handsomely paid it by sending her six pairs of gloves. When they arrived, however, she found they were not large enough, for, in a fit of quite unusual vanity, she had told him a size smaller than she really took. She despatched them back to the shop which paid no attention either to the returned gloves or her letter asking for them to be exchanged. ‘And they would have done so beautifully for me,’ mourned Emmy.
She
