"It is a poor imagination," returned Donal, "that requires age or any mere accessory to rouse it. The very absence of everything external, the bareness of the mere humanity involved, may in itself be an excitement greater than any accompaniment of the antique or the picturesque. But in this old-fashioned garden, in the midst of these old-fashioned flowers, with all the gentlenesses of old-fashioned life suggested by them, it is easier to imagine the people themselves than where all is so cold, hard, severe--so much on the defensive, as in that huge, sullen pile on the hilltop."
"I am afraid you find it dull up there!" said Miss Graeme.
"Not at all," replied Donal; "I have there a most interesting pupil.
But indeed one who has been used to spend day after day alone, clouds and heather and sheep and dogs his companions, does not depend much for pastime. Give me a chair and a table, fire enough to keep me from shivering, the few books I like best and writing materials, and I am absolutely content. But beyond these things I have at the castle a fine library--useless no doubt for most purposes of modern study, but full of precious old books. There I can at any moment be in the best of company! There is more of the marvellous in an old library than ever any magic could work!"
"I do not quite understand you," said the lady.
But she would have spoken nearer the truth if she had said she had not a glimmer of what he meant.
"Let me explain!" said Donal: "what could necromancy, which is one of the branches of magic, do for one at the best?"
"Well!" exclaimed Miss Graeme; "--but I suppose if you believe in ghosts, you may as well believe in raising them!"
"I did not mean to start any question about belief; I only wanted to suppose necromancy for the moment a fact, and put it at its best: suppose the magician could do for you all he professed, what would it amount to?--Only this--to bring before your eyes a shadowy resemblance of the form of flesh and blood, itself but a passing shadow, in which the man moved on the earth, and was known to his fellow-men? At best the necromancer might succeed in drawing from him some obscure utterance concerning your future, far more likely to destroy your courage than enable you to face what was before you; so that you would depart from your peep into the unknown, merely less able to encounter the duties of life."
"Whoever has a desire for such information must be made very different from me!" said Miss Graeme.
"Are you sure of that? Did you never make yourself unhappy about what might be on its way to you, and wish you could know beforehand something to guide you how to meet it?"
"I should have to think before answering that question."
"Now tell me--what can the art of writing, and its expansion, or perhaps its development rather, in printing, do in the same direction as necromancy? May not a man well long after personal communication with this or that one of the greatest who have lived before him? I grant that in respect of some it can do nothing; but in respect of others, instead of mocking you with an airy semblance of their bodily forms, and the murmur of a few doubtful words from their lips, it places in your hands a key to their inmost thoughts.
Some would say this is not personal communication; but it is far more personal than the other. A man's personality does not consist in the clothes he wears; it only appears in them; no more does it consist in his body, but in him who wears it."
As he spoke, Miss Graeme kept looking him gravely in the face, manifesting, however, more respect than interest. She had been accustomed to a very different tone in young men. She had found their main ambition to amuse; to talk sense about other matters than the immediate uses of this world, was an out-of-the-way thing! I do not say Miss Graeme, even on the subject last in hand, appreciated the matter of Donal's talk. She perceived he was in earnest, and happily was able to know a deep pond from a shallow one, but her best thought concerning him was--what a strange new specimen of humanity was here!
The appearance of her brother coming down the walk, put a stop to the conversation.
