The winter came at last in good earnest--first black frost, then white snow, then sleet and wind and rain; then snow again, which fell steady and calm, and lay thick. After that came hard frost, and brought plenty of skating, and to Davie the delight of teaching his master. Donal had many falls, but was soon, partly in virtue of those same falls, a very decent skater. Davie claimed all the merit of his successful training; and when his master did anything particularly well, would remark with pride, that he had taught him.
But the good thing in it for Davie was, that he noted the immediate faith with which Donal did or tried to do what he told him: this reacted in opening his mind to the beauty and dignity of obedience, and went a long way towards revealing the low moral condition of the man who seeks freedom through refusal to act at the will of another.
He who does so will come by degrees to have no will of his own, and act only from impulse--which may be the will of a devil. So Donal and Davie grew together into one heart of friendship. Donal never longed for his hours with Davie to pass, and Davie was never so happy as when with Donal. The one was gently leading the other into the paths of liberty. Nothing but the teaching of him who made the human soul can make that soul free, but it is in great measure through those who have already learned that he teaches; and Davie was an apt pupil, promising to need less of the discipline of failure and pain that he was strong to believe, and ready to obey.
But Donal was not all the day with Davie, and latterly had begun to feel a little anxious about the time the boy spent away from him--partly with his brother, partly with the people about the stable, and partly with his father, who evidently found the presence of his younger son less irksome to him than that of any other person, and saw more of him than of Forgue: the amount of loneliness the earl could endure was amazing. But after what he had seen and heard, Donal was most anxious concerning his time with his father, only he felt it a delicate thing to ask him about it. At length, however, Davie himself opened up the matter.
"Mr. Grant," he said one day, "I wish you could hear the grand fairy-stories my papa tells!"
"I wish I might!" answered Donal.
"I will ask him to let you come and hear. I have told him you can make fairy-tales too; only he has quite another way of doing it;--and I must confess," added Davie a little pompously, "I do not follow him so easily as you.--Besides," he added, "I never can find anything in what you call the cupboard behind the curtain of the story. I wonder sometimes if his stories have any cupboard!--I will ask him to-day to let you come."
"I think that would hardly do," said Donal. "Your father likes to tell his boy fairy-tales, but he might not care to tell them to a man. You must remember, too, that though I have been in the house what you think a long time, your father has seen very little of me, and might feel me in the way: invalids do not generally enjoy the company of strangers. You had better not ask him."
"But I have often told him how good you are, Mr. Grant, and how you can't bear anything that is not right, and I am sure he must like you--I don't mean so well as I do, because you haven't to teach him anything, and nobody can love anybody so well as the one he teaches to be good."
"Still I think you had better leave it alone lest he should not like your asking him. I should be sorry to have you disappointed."
"I do not mind that so much as I used. If you do not tell me I am not to do it, I think I will venture."
Donal said no more. He did not feel at liberty, from his own feeling merely, to check the boy. The thing was not wrong, and something might be intended to come out of it! He shrank from the least ruling of events, believing man's only call to action is duty. So he left Davie to do as he pleased.
"Does your father often tell you a fairy-tale?" he asked.
"Not every day, sir."
"What time does he tell them?"
"Generally when I go to him after tea."
"Do you go any time you like?"
"Yes; but he does not always let me stay. Sometimes he talks about mamma, I think; but only coming into the fairy-tale.--He has told me one in the middle of the day! I think he would if I woke him up in the night! But that would not do, for he has terrible headaches.
Perhaps that is what sometimes makes his stories so terrible I have to beg him to stop!"
"And does he stop?"
"Well--no--I don't think he ever does.--When a story is once begun, I suppose it ought to be finished!"
So the matter rested for the time. But about a week after, Donal received one morning through the butler an invitation to dine with the earl, and concluded it was due to Davie, whom he therefore expected to find with his father. He put on his best clothes, and followed Simmons up the grand staircase. The great rooms of the castle were on the first floor, but he passed the entrance to them, following his guide up and up to the second floor, where the earl had his own apartment. Here he was shown into a small room, richly furnished after a sombrely ornate fashion, the drapery and coverings much faded, worn even to shabbiness. It had been for a century or so the private sitting-room of the lady of the castle, but was now used by the earl, perhaps in memory of his wife. Here he received his sons, and now Donal, but never any whom business or politeness compelled him to see.
There was no one in the room when Donal entered, but after about ten minutes a door opened at the further end, and lord Morven appearing from his bedroom, shook hands with him with some faint show of kindness. Almost the same moment the butler entered from a third door, and said dinner waited. The earl walked on, and Donal followed. This room also was a small one. The meal was laid on a little round table. There were but two covers, and Simmons alone was in waiting.
