The White People

F >> Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The White People

THE WHITE PEOPLE

By Frances Hodgson Burnett





TO LIONEL

"The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me."




THE WHITE PEOPLE



CHAPTER I

Perhaps the things which happened could only have happened to me. I do
not know. I never heard of things like them happening to any one else.
But I am not sorry they did happen. I am in secret deeply and strangely
glad. I have heard other people say things--and they were not always
sad people, either--which made me feel that if they knew what I know it
would seem to them as though some awesome, heavy load they had always
dragged about with them had fallen from their shoulders. To most people
everything is so uncertain that if they could only see or hear and know
something clear they would drop upon their knees and give thanks. That
was what I felt myself before I found out so strangely, and I was only a
girl. That is why I intend to write this down as well as I can. It will
not be very well done, because I never was clever at all, and always
found it difficult to talk.

I say that perhaps these things could only have happened to me, because,
as I look back over my life, I realize that it has always been a rather
curious one. Even when those who took care of me did not know I was
thinking at all, I had begun to wonder if I were not different from
other children. That was, of course, largely because Muircarrie
Castle was in such a wild and remote part of Scotland that when my few
relations felt they must pay me a visit as a mere matter of duty, their
journey from London, or their pleasant places in the south of England,
seemed to them like a pilgrimage to a sort of savage land; and when a
conscientious one brought a child to play with me, the little civilized
creature was as frightened of me as I was of it. My shyness and fear of
its strangeness made us both dumb. No doubt I seemed like a new breed of
inoffensive little barbarian, knowing no tongue but its own.

A certain clannish etiquette made it seem necessary that a relation
should pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in a way important. The
huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon its battlemented rock was
mine; I was a great heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess
of the clan. But I was a plain, undersized little child, and had no
attraction for any one but Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took
care of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of the library, and who was
a distant relative also. They were both like me in the fact that they
were not given to speech; but sometimes we talked to one another, and I
knew they were fond of me, as I was fond of them. They were really all I
had.

When I was a little girl I did not, of course, understand that I was
an important person, and I could not have realized the significance of
being an heiress. I had always lived in the castle, and was used to its
hugeness, of which I only knew corners. Until I was seven years old,
I think, I imagined all but very poor people lived in castles and were
saluted by every one they passed. It seemed probable that all little
girls had a piper who strode up and down the terrace and played on the
bagpipes when guests were served in the dining-hall.

My piper's name was Feargus, and in time I found out that the guests
from London could not endure the noise he made when he marched to and
fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading like a stag on a hillside.
It was an insult to tell him to stop playing, because it was his
religion to believe that The Muircarrie must be piped proudly to;
and his ancestors had been pipers to the head of the clan for five
generations. It was his duty to march round the dining-hall and play
while the guests feasted, but I was obliged in the end to make him
believe that he could be heard better from the terrace--because when he
was outside his music was not spoiled by the sound of talking. It was
very difficult, at first. But because I was his chieftainess, and had
learned how to give orders in a rather proud, stern little voice, he
knew he must obey.

Even this kind of thing may show that my life was a peculiar one; but
the strangest part of it was that, while I was at the head of so many
people, I did not really belong to any one, and I did not know that this
was unusual. One of my early memories is that I heard an under-nursemaid
say to another this curious thing: "Both her father and mother were dead
when she was born." I did not even know that was a remarkable thing to
say until I was several years older and Jean Braidfute told me what had
been meant.

My father and mother had both been very young and beautiful and
wonderful. It was said that my father was the handsomest chieftain in
Scotland, and that his wife was as beautiful as he was. They came to
Muircarrie as soon as they were married and lived a splendid year there
together. Sometimes they were quite alone, and spent their days fishing
or riding or wandering on the moor together, or reading by the fire in
the library the ancient books Angus Macayre found for them. The library
was a marvelous place, and Macayre knew every volume in it. They used
to sit and read like children among fairy stories, and then they would
persuade Macayre to tell them the ancient tales he knew--of the days
when Agricola forced his way in among the Men of the Woods, who would
die any savage death rather than be conquered. Macayre was a sort of
heirloom himself, and he knew and believed them all.

I don't know how it was that I myself seemed to see my young father and
mother so clearly and to know how radiant and wildly in love they
were. Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to tell me. But I knew. So I
understood, in a way of my own, what happened to my mother one brilliant
late October afternoon when my father was brought home dead--followed by
the guests who had gone out shooting with him. His foot had caught in a
tuft of heather, and his gun in going off had killed him. One moment
he had been the handsomest young chieftain in Scotland, and when he was
brought home they could not have let my mother see his face.

But she never asked to see it. She was on the terrace which juts over
the rock the castle is built on, and which looks out over the purple
world of climbing moor. She saw from there the returning party of
shooters and gillies winding its way slowly through the heather,
following a burden carried on a stretcher of fir boughs. Some of her
women guests were with her, and one of them said afterward that when she
first caught sight of the moving figures she got up slowly and crept
to the stone balustrade with a crouching movement almost like a young
leopardess preparing to spring. But she only watched, making neither
sound nor movement until the cortege was near enough for her to see that
every man's head was bowed upon his breast, and not one was covered.

Then she said, quite slowly, "They--have--taken off--their bonnets," and
fell upon the terrace like a dropped stone.

It was because of this that the girl said that she was dead when I was
born. It must have seemed almost as if she were not a living thing.
She did not open her eyes or make a sound; she lay white and cold.
The celebrated physicians who came from London talked of catalepsy
and afterward wrote scientific articles which tried to explain her
condition. She did not know when I was born. She died a few minutes
after I uttered my first cry.

I know only one thing more, and that Jean Braidfute told me after I grew
up. Jean had been my father's nursery governess when he wore his first
kilts, and she loved my mother fondly.

"I knelt by her bed and held her hand and watched her face for three
hours after they first laid her down," she said. "And my eyes were so
near her every moment that I saw a thing the others did not know her
well enough, or love her well enough, to see.

"The first hour she was like a dead thing--aye, like a dead thing that
had never lived. But when the hand of the clock passed the last second,
and the new hour began, I bent closer to her because I saw a change
stealing over her. It was not color--it was not even a shadow of a
motion. It was something else. If I had spoken what I felt, they would
have said I was light-headed with grief and have sent me away. I have
never told man or woman. It was my secret and hers. I can tell you,
Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was beginning to listen to
something--to listen.

"It was as if to a sound--far, far away at first. But cold and white as
stone she lay content, and listened. In the next hour the far-off
sound had drawn nearer, and it had become something else--something she
saw--something which saw her. First her young marble face had peace in
it; then it had joy. She waited in her young stone body until you were
born and she could break forth. She waited no longer then.

"Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had not gone far from the
body that had held him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for a bit
when he found himself out of it. But soon he had begun to call to her
that was like his own heart to him. And she had heard. And then, being
half away from earth herself, she had seen him and known he was waiting,
and that he would not leave for any far place without her. She was so
still that the big doctors thought more than once she had passed. But I
knew better."

It was long before I was old enough to be told anything like this that I
began to feel that the moor was in secret my companion and friend, that
it was not only the moot to me, but something else. It was like a thing
alive--a huge giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself, or
covering itself with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and
twisted itself into wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day,
perhaps, when it was purple and yellow with gorse and heather and broom,
and the honey scents drew bees and butterflies and birds. But soon I saw
and was drawn by another thing.

How young was I that afternoon when I sat in the deep window and watched
the low, soft whiteness creeping out and hovering over the heather as
if the moor had breathed it? I do not remember. It was such a low little
mist at first; and it crept and crept until its creeping grew into
something heavier and whiter, and it began to hide the heather and
the gorse and broom, and then the low young fir-trees. It mounted and
mounted, and sometimes a breath of wind twisted it into weird shapes,
almost like human creatures. It opened and closed again, and then it
dragged and crept and grew thicker. And as I pressed my face against the
window-pane, it mounted still higher and got hold of the moor and hid
it, hanging heavy and white and waiting. That was what came into my
child mind: that it had done what the moor had told it to do; had hidden
things which wanted to be hidden, and then it waited.

Strangers say that Muircarrie moor is the most beautiful and the most
desolate place in the world, but it never seemed desolate to me. From my
first memory of it I had a vague, half-comforted feeling that there
was some strange life on it one could not exactly see, but was always
conscious of. I know now why I felt this, but I did not know then.

If I had been older when I first began to see what I did see there, I
should no doubt have read things in books which would have given rise
in my mind to doubts and wonders; but I was only a little child who had
lived a life quite apart from the rest of the world. I was too silent by
nature to talk and ask questions, even if I had had others to talk to. I
had only Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years later, they knew what
I did not, and would have put me off with adroit explanations if I had
been curious. But I was not curious. I accepted everything as it came
and went.



CHAPTER II

I only six when Wee Brown Elspeth was brought to me. Jean and Angus were
as fond of each other in their silent way as they were of me, and they
often went together with me when I was taken out for my walks. I was
kept in the open air a great deal, and Angus would walk by the side of
my small, shaggy Shetland pony and lead him over rough or steep places.
Sheltie, the pony, was meant for use when we wished to fare farther than
a child could walk; but I was trained to sturdy marching and climbing
even from my babyhood. Because I so loved the moor, we nearly always
rambled there. Often we set out early in the morning, and some simple
food was carried, so that we need not return to the castle until we
chose. I would ride Sheltie and walk by turns until we found a place
I liked; then Jean and Angus would sit down among the heather, Sheltie
would be secured, and I would wander about and play in my own way. I do
not think it was in a strange way. I think I must have played as almost
any lonely little girl might have played. I used to find a corner among
the bushes and pretend it was my house and that I had little friends who
came to play with me. I only remember one thing which was not like the
ordinary playing of children. It was a habit I had of sitting quite
still a long time and listening. That was what I called it--"listening."
I was listening to hear if the life on the moor made any sound I could
understand. I felt as if it might, if I were very still and listened
long enough.

Angus and Jean and I were not afraid of rain and mist and change of
weather. If we had been we could have had little outdoor life. We always
carried plaids enough to keep us warm and dry. So on this day I speak
of we did not turn back when we found ourselves in the midst of a sudden
mist. We sat down in a sheltered place and waited, knowing it would lift
in time. The sun had been shining when we set out.

Angus and Jean were content to sit and guard me while I amused myself.
They knew I would keep near them and run into no danger. I was not an
adventurous child. I was, in fact, in a more than usually quiet mood
that morning. The quiet had come upon me when the mist had begun to
creep about and inclose us. I liked it. I liked the sense of being shut
in by the soft whiteness I had so often watched from my nursery window
in the castle.

"People might be walking about," I said to Angus when he lifted me from
Sheltie's back.

"We couldn't see them. They might be walking."

"Nothing that would hurt ye, bairnie," he answered.

"No, they wouldn't hurt me," I said. I had never been afraid that
anything on the moor would hurt me.

I played very little that day. The quiet and the mist held me still.
Soon I sat down and began to "listen." After a while I knew that Jean
and Angus were watching me, but it did not disturb me. They often
watched me when they thought I did not know they were doing it.

I had sat listening for nearly half an hour when I heard the first
muffled, slow trampling of horses' hoofs. I knew what it was even before
it drew near enough for me to be conscious of the other sounds--the
jingling of arms and chains and the creaking of leather one notices as
troopers pass by. Armed and mounted men were coming toward me. That was
what the sounds meant; but they seemed faint and distant, though I knew
they were really quite near. Jean and Angus did not appear to hear them.
I knew that I only heard them because I had been listening.

Out of the mist they rode a company of wild-looking men wearing garments
such as I had never seen before. Most of them were savage and uncouth,
and their clothes were disordered and stained as if with hard travel and
fight. I did not know--or even ask myself--why they did not frighten me,
but they did not. Suddenly I seemed to know that they were brave men
and had been doing some brave, hard thing. Here and there among them I
caught sight of a broken and stained sword, or a dirk with only a
hilt left. They were all pale, but their wild faces were joyous and
triumphant. I saw it as they drew near.

The man who seemed their chieftain was a lean giant who was darker but,
under his darkness, paler than the rest. On his forehead was a queer,
star-shaped scar. He rode a black horse, and before him he held close
with his left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange, rich clothes.
The big man's hand was pressed against her breast as he held her; but
though it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a dark-red stain on
the embroideries of her dress. Her dress was brown, and she had brown
hair and soft brown eyes like a little doe's. The moment I saw her I
loved her.

The black horse stopped before me. The wild troop drew up and waited
behind. The great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and then, lifting
the little girl in his long arms, bent down and set her gently on her
feet on the mossy earth in the mist beside me. I got up to greet her,
and we stood smiling at each other. And in that moment as we stood the
black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling began again, the wild
company swept on its way, and the white mist closed behind it as if it
had never passed.

Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but
that cannot be helped and does not really matter. It was in that way the
thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me. Anything might
happen on the moor--anything. And there was the fair little girl with
the eyes like a doe's.

I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house
among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we
began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on
the embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking
herself how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked
a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her
girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness.

I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were
happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different
from mine, I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun
shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in
a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not
told about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When
I ran to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went
back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.

"Where did she go?" I asked them, turning my head from side to side.

They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was
trembling a little.

"Who was she, Ysobel?" she said.

"The little girl the men brought to play with me," I answered, still
looking about me.

"The big one on the black horse put her down--the big one with the star
here." I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.

For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me.

"Dark Malcolm of the Glen," he broke out. "Wee Brown Elspeth."

"But she is white--quite white!" I said.

"Where did she go?"

Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me close to her
breast.

"She's one of the fair ones," she said, kissing and patting me. "She
will come again. She'll come often, I dare say. But she's gone now and
we must go, too. Get up, Angus, man. We're for the castle."

If we three had been different--if we had ever had the habit of talking
and asking questions--we might surely have asked one another questions
as I rode on Sheltie's back, with Angus leading us. But they asked
me nothing, and I said very little except that I once spoke of the
wild-looking horsemen and their pale, joyous faces.

"They were glad," was all I said.

There was also one brief query from Angus.

"Did she talk to you, bairnie?" he said.

I hesitated and stared at him quite a long time. Then I shook my head
and answered, slowly, "N-no."

Because I realized then, for the first time, that we had said no words
at all. But I had known what she wanted me to understand, and she had
known what I might have said to her if I had spoken--and no words were
needed. And it was better.

They took me home to the castle, and I was given my supper and put to
bed. Jean sat by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit rather a
long time, because I was so happy with my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth
and the certainty that she would come again. It was not Jean's words
which had made me sure. I knew.

She came many times. Through all my childish years I knew that she
would come and play with me every few days--though I never saw the wild
troopers again or the big, lean man with the scar. Children who play
together are not very curious about one another, and I simply accepted
her with delight. Somehow I knew that she lived happily in a place not
far away. She could come and go, it seemed, without trouble. Sometimes
I found her--or she found me upon the moor; and often she appeared in
my nursery in the castle. When we were together Jean Braidfute seemed to
prefer that we should be alone, and was inclined to keep the under-nurse
occupied in other parts of the wing I lived in. I never asked her to do
this, but I was glad that it was done. Wee Elspeth was glad, too. After
our first meeting she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the red
stain was gone; but she was always Wee Brown Elspeth with the doelike
eyes and the fair, transparent face, the very fair little face. As I had
noticed the strange, clear pallor of the rough troopers, so I noticed
that she was curiously fair. And as I occasionally saw other persons
with the same sort of fairness, I thought it was a purity of complexion
special to some, but not to all. I was not fair like that, and neither
was any one else I knew.



CHAPTER III

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.