United States or Ethiopia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"When your mother brought you into the world she was listening to one outside calling to her, and it opened the way for you." At night Hector MacNairn and his mother and I sat on the terrace under stars which seemed listening things, and we three drew nearer to one another, and nearer and nearer.
The day had been more exquisite and the sunset more wonderful than before. Mrs. MacNairn was sitting by her son's side in the bedroom whose windows looked over the moor. I am not going to say one word of what had come between the two sunsets. Mrs. MacNairn and I had clung and clung. We had promised never to part from each other.
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.
"Eh, bairn!" he said, suddenly, in a queer, moved way. "Eh, bairn!" And he took hold of both my hands and kissed them, pressing them quite long and emotionally to his lips. But he said nothing else, and when he dropped them I went out of the room. It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and his mother came. It was even more beautiful than I had thought it would be.
I saw you had never heard the story before. And yet you were telling me that you had played with the child." "He came home and told me about you," Mrs. MacNairn said. "His fear of The Fear was more for me than for himself. He knew that if he brought you to me, you who are more complete than we are, clearer-eyed and nearer, nearer, I should begin to feel that he was not going out.
"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.
Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which were always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his story was placed howsoever remote and unknown the scene it was a real place, and the people who lived in it were real, as if he had some magic power to call up human things to breathe and live and set one's heart beating. I read everything he wrote.
A shepherd found his body in a tarn at daybreak. They took him back to his father's home." I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at Angus. "But it couldn't be Feargus," I cried. "I saw him an hour ago. He passed us playing on his pipes. He was playing a new tune I had never heard before a wonderful, joyous thing. I both heard and SAW him!" Angus stood still and watched me.
MacNairn joined in the talk, their meaning became a clear thing to me, and I knew that they were only talking quite simply of something they had often talked of before. They were not as afraid of The Fear as most people are, because they had thought of and reasoned about it so much, and always calmly and with clear and open minds.
"That is a good way of putting it, Miss Muircarrie," he answered. "MacNairn would like that. You must tell him about it yourself." I did not mean to glance through the flowers again, but I did it involuntarily. And I met the other eyes the wonderful, interested ones just as I had met them before. It almost seemed as if he had been watching me.
Word Of The Day