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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. 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.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819927013
Langue	English

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THE WHITE PEOPLE
By Frances Hodgson Burnett
THE WHITE PEOPLE
CHAPTER I
Perhaps the things which happened could only havehappened to me. I do not know. I never heard of things like themhappening to any one else. But I am not sorry they did happen. I amin secret deeply and strangely glad. I have heard other people saythings— and they were not always sad people, either— which made mefeel that if they knew what I know it would seem to them as thoughsome awesome, heavy load they had always dragged about with themhad fallen from their shoulders. To most people everything is souncertain that if they could only see or hear and know somethingclear they would drop upon their knees and give thanks. That waswhat I felt myself before I found out so strangely, and I was onlya 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 havehappened to me, because, as I look back over my life, I realizethat it has always been a rather curious one. Even when those whotook care of me did not know I was thinking at all, I had begun towonder if I were not different from other children. That was, ofcourse, largely because Muircarrie Castle was in such a wild andremote part of Scotland that when my few relations felt they mustpay me a visit as a mere matter of duty, their journey from London,or their pleasant places in the south of England, seemed to themlike a pilgrimage to a sort of savage land; and when aconscientious one brought a child to play with me, the littlecivilized creature was as frightened of me as I was of it. Myshyness and fear of its strangeness made us both dumb. No doubt Iseemed like a new breed of inoffensive little barbarian, knowing notongue but its own.
A certain clannish etiquette made it seem necessarythat a relation should pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in away important. The huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon itsbattlemented rock was mine; I was a great heiress, and I was, so tospeak, the chieftainess of the clan. But I was a plain, undersizedlittle child, and had no attraction for any one but Jean Braidfute,a distant cousin, who took care of me, and Angus Macayre, who tookcare of the library, and who was a distant relative also. They wereboth like me in the fact that they were not given to speech; butsometimes we talked to one another, and I knew they were fond ofme, 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 haverealized the significance of being an heiress. I had always livedin the castle, and was used to its hugeness, of which I only knewcorners. Until I was seven years old, I think, I imagined all butvery poor people lived in castles and were saluted by every onethey passed. It seemed probable that all little girls had a piperwho strode up and down the terrace and played on the bagpipes whenguests were served in the dining-hall.
My piper's name was Feargus, and in time I found outthat the guests from London could not endure the noise he made whenhe marched to and fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading likea 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 bepiped proudly to; and his ancestors had been pipers to the head ofthe clan for five generations. It was his duty to march round thedining-hall and play while the guests feasted, but I was obliged inthe end to make him believe that he could be heard better from theterrace— because when he was outside his music was not spoiled bythe sound of talking. It was very difficult, at first. But becauseI was his chieftainess, and had learned how to give orders in arather proud, stern little voice, he knew he must obey.
Even this kind of thing may show that my life was apeculiar one; but the strangest part of it was that, while I was atthe head of so many people, I did not really belong to any one, andI did not know that this was unusual. One of my early memories isthat I heard an under-nursemaid say to another this curious thing:“Both her father and mother were dead when she was born. ” I didnot even know that was a remarkable thing to say until I wasseveral years older and Jean Braidfute told me what had beenmeant.
My father and mother had both been very young andbeautiful and wonderful. It was said that my father was thehandsomest chieftain in Scotland, and that his wife was asbeautiful as he was. They came to Muircarrie as soon as they weremarried and lived a splendid year there together. Sometimes theywere quite alone, and spent their days fishing or riding orwandering on the moor together, or reading by the fire in thelibrary the ancient books Angus Macayre found for them. The librarywas a marvelous place, and Macayre knew every volume in it. Theyused to sit and read like children among fairy stories, and thenthey would persuade Macayre to tell them the ancient tales he knew—of the days when Agricola forced his way in among the Men of theWoods, who would die any savage death rather than be conquered.Macayre was a sort of heirloom himself, and he knew and believedthem all.
I don't know how it was that I myself seemed to seemy young father and mother so clearly and to know how radiant andwildly in love they were. Surely Jean Braidfute had not words totell me. But I knew. So I understood, in a way of my own, whathappened to my mother one brilliant late October afternoon when myfather was brought home dead— followed by the guests who had goneout 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 thehandsomest young chieftain in Scotland, and when he was broughthome they could not have let my mother see his face.
But she never asked to see it. She was on theterrace which juts over the rock the castle is built on, and whichlooks out over the purple world of climbing moor. She saw fromthere the returning party of shooters and gillies winding its wayslowly through the heather, following a burden carried on astretcher of fir boughs. Some of her women guests were with her,and one of them said afterward that when she first caught sight ofthe moving figures she got up slowly and crept to the stonebalustrade with a crouching movement almost like a young leopardesspreparing to spring. But she only watched, making neither sound normovement until the cortege was near enough for her to see thatevery man's head was bowed upon his breast, and not one wascovered.
Then she said, quite slowly, “They— have— taken off—their bonnets, ” and fell upon the terrace like a droppedstone.
It was because of this that the girl said that shewas dead when I was born. It must have seemed almost as if she werenot a living thing. She did not open her eyes or make a sound; shelay white and cold. The celebrated physicians who came from Londontalked of catalepsy and afterward wrote scientific articles whichtried 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 Braidfutetold me after I grew up. Jean had been my father's nurserygoverness when he wore his first kilts, and she loved my motherfondly.
“I knelt by her bed and held her hand and watchedher face for three hours after they first laid her down, ” shesaid. "And my eyes were so near her every moment that I saw a thingthe others did not know her well enough, or love her well enough,to see.
"The first hour she was like a dead thing— aye, likea dead thing that had never lived. But when the hand of the clockpassed the last second, and the new hour began, I bent closer toher because I saw a change stealing over her. It was not color— itwas not even a shadow of a motion. It was something else. If I hadspoken what I felt, they would have said I was light-headed withgrief and have sent me away. I have never told man or woman. It wasmy secret and hers. I can tell you, Ysobel. The change I saw was asif 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 thenext hour the far-off sound had drawn nearer, and it had becomesomething else— something she saw— something which saw her. Firsther young marble face had peace in it; then it had joy. She waitedin her young stone body until you were born and she could breakforth. She waited no longer then.
“Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had notgone far from the body that had held him when he fell. Perhaps hehad felt lost for a bit when he found himself out of it. But soonhe had begun to call to her that was like his own heart to him. Andshe had heard. And then, being half away from earth herself, shehad seen him and known he was waiting, and that he would not leavefor any far place without her. She was so still that the bigdoctors thought more than once she had passed. But I knew better.”
It was long before I was old enough to be toldanything like this that I began to feel that the moor was in secretmy companion and friend, that it was not only the moot to me, butsomething else. It was like a thing alive— a huge giant lyingspread out in the sun warming itself, or covering itself withthick, white mist which sometimes writhed and twisted itself intowraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day, perhaps, when itwas purple and yellow with gorse and heather and broom, and thehoney scents drew bees and butterflies and birds. But soon I sawand was drawn by another thing.
How young was I that afternoon when I sat in thedeep window and watched the low, soft whiteness creeping out andhovering over the heather as if the moor had breathed it? I do notremember. It was such a low little mist at first; and it crept andcrept until its cr