But here was a man who touched no imaginary hat while he stood in the presence of his mistress, neither swore at her in the stable yard. He looked her straight in the face, and would upon occasion speak – not his mind – but the truth to her. Even his slight mistress had the conviction that if one dared in his presence but utter her name lightly, whoever he were he would have to answer to him for it. What a lovely thing was true service – Absolutely divine!
But, alas, such a youth would never, could never dare offer other than such service! Were she even to encourage him as a maiden might, he would but serve her the better – would but embody his recognition of her favour, in fervour of ministering devotion. – Was it not a recognized law, however, in the relation of superiors and inferiors, that with regard to such matters as well as others of no moment, the lady?
Ah, but! for her to take the initiative, would provoke the conclusion – as revolting to her as unavoidable to him – that she judged herself his superior – so greatly his superior as to be absolved from the necessity of behaving to him on the ordinary footing of man and woman. What a ground to start from with a husband! The idea was hateful to her. She tried the argument that such a procedure arrogated merely a superiority in social standing; but it made her recoil from it the more. He was so immeasurably her superior, that the poor little advantage on her side vanished like a candle in the sunlight, and she laughed herself to scorn.
"Fancy," she laughed, "a midge, on the strength of having wings, condescending to offer marriage to a horse !" It would argue the assumption of equality in other and more important things than rank, or at least the confidence that her social superiority not only counterbalanced the difference, but left enough over to her credit to justify her initiative. And what a miserable fiction that money and position had a right to the first move before greatness of living fact! that having had the precedence of being! That Malcolm should imagine such her judgment – No – let all go – let himself go rather! And then he might not choose to accept her munificent offer! Or worse – far worse! – what if he should be tempted by rank and wealth, and, accepting her, be shorn of his glory and proved of the ordinary human type after all! A thousand times rather would she see the bright particular star blazing unreachable above her! What! would she carry it about a cinder in her pocket? – And yet if he could be "turned to a coal," why should she go on worshipping him? – alas! the offer itself was the only test severe enough to try him withal, and if he proved a cinder, she would by the very use of the test be bound to love, honour, and obey her cinder.
She could not well reject him for accepting her – neither could she marry him if he rose grandly superior to her temptations. No; he could be nothing to her nearer than the bright particular star.
Thus went the thoughts to and fro in the minds of each. Neither could see the way. Both feared the risk of loss. Neither could hope greatly for gain.
CHAPTER LXII: THE DUNE
Having put Kelpie up, and fed and bedded her, Malcolm took his way to the Seaton, full of busily anxious thought. Things had taken a bad turn, and he was worse off for counsel than before. The enemy was in the house with his sister, and he had no longer any chance of judging how matters were going, as now he never rode out with her. But at least he could haunt the house. He would run therefore to his grandfather, and tell him that he was going to occupy his old quarters at the House that night.
Returning directly and passing, as had been his custom, through the kitchen to ascend the small corkscrew stair the servants generally used, he encountered Mrs Courthope, who told him that her ladyship had given orders that her maid, who had come with Lady Bellair, should have his room.
He was at once convinced that Florimel had done so with the intention of banishing him from the house, for there were dozens of rooms vacant, and many of them more suitable. It was a hard blow! How he wished for Mr Graham to consult! And yet Mr Graham was not of much use where any sort of plotting was wanted. He asked Mrs Courthope to let him have another room; but she looked so doubtful that he withdrew his request, and went back to his grandfather.
It was Saturday, and not many of the boats would go fishing. Findlay's would not leave the harbour till Sunday was over, and therefore Malcolm was free. But he could not rest, and would go line fishing.
"Daddy," he said, "I'm gaein oot to catch a haddick or sae to oor denner the morn. Ye micht jist sit doon upo' ane o' the Boar's Taes, an' tak a play o' yer pipes. I'll hear ye fine, an' it'll du me guid."
The Boar's Toes were two or three small rocks that rose out of the sand near the end of the dune. Duncan agreed right willingly, and Malcolm, borrowing some lines, and taking the Psyche's dinghy, rowed out into the bay.
The sun was down, the moon was up, and he had caught more fish than he wanted. His grandfather had got tired, and gone home, and the fountain of his anxious thoughts began to flow more rapidly. He must go ashore. He must go up to the House: who could tell what might not be going on there? He drew in his line, purposing to take the best of the fish to Miss Horn, and some to Mrs Courthope, as in the old days.
The Psyche still lay on the sands, and he was rowing the dinghy towards her, when, looking round to direct his course, he thought he caught a glimpse of some one seated on the slope of the dune. Yes, there was some one there, sure enough. The old times rushed back on his memory: could it be Florimel? Alas! it was not likely she would now be wandering about alone! But if it were? Then for one endeavour more to rouse her slumbering conscience! He would call up all the associations of the last few months she had spent in the place, and, with the spirit of her father, as it were, hovering over her, conjure her, in his name, to break with Liftore.
He rowed swiftly to the Psyche – beached and drew up the dinghy, and climbed the dune. Plainly enough it was a lady who sat there. It might be one from the upper town, enjoying the lovely night; it might be Florimel, but how could she have got away, or wished to get away from her newly arrived guests? The voices of several groups of walkers came from the high road behind the dune, but there was no other figure to be seen all along the sands. He drew nearer. The lady did not move. If it were Florimel, would she not know him as he came, and would she wait for him?
He drew nearer still. His heart gave a throb. Could it be? Or was the moon weaving some hallucination in his troubled brain? If it was a phantom, it was that of Lady Clementina; if but modelled of the filmy vapours of the moonlight, and the artist his own brain, the phantom was welcome as joy! His spirit seemed to soar aloft in the yellow air, and hang hovering over and around her, while his body stood rooted to the spot, like one who fears by moving nigher to lose the lovely vision of a mirage. She sat motionless, her gaze on the sea. Malcolm bethought himself that she could not know him in his fisher dress, and must take him for some rude fisherman staring at her. He must go at once, or approach and address her. He came forward at once.
"My lady!" he said.
She did not start. Neither did she speak. She did not even turn her face. She rose first, then turned, and held out her hand. Three steps more, and he had it in his, and his eyes looked straight into hers. Neither spoke. The moon shone full on Clementina's face. There was no illumination fitter for that face than the moonlight, and to Malcolm it was lovelier than ever. Nor was it any wonder it should seem so to him, for certainly never had the eyes in it rested on his with such a lovely and trusting light in them.
A moment she stood, then slowly sank upon the sand, and drew her skirts about her with a dumb show of invitation. The place where she sat was a little terraced hollow in the slope, forming a convenient seat. Malcolm saw but could not believe she actually made room for him to sit beside her – alone with her in the universe. It was too much; he dared not believe it. And now by one of those wondrous duplications which are not always at least born of the fancy, the same scene in which he had found Florimel thus seated on the slope of the dune, appeared to be passing again through Malcolm's consciousness, only instead of Florimel was Clementina, and instead of the sun was the moon. And creature of the sunlight as Florimel was, bright and gay and beautiful, she paled into a creature of the cloud beside this maiden of the moonlight, tall and stately, silent and soft and grand.
Again she made a movement. This time he could not doubt her invitation. It was as if her soul made room in her unseen world for him to enter and sit beside her. But who could enter heaven in his work day garments?
"Won't you sit by me, Malcolm?" seeing his more than hesitation, she said at last, with a slight tremble in the voice that was music itself in his ears.
"I have been catching fish, my lady," he answered, "and my clothes must be unpleasant. I will sit here."
He went a little lower on the slope, and laid himself down, leaning on his elbow.
"Do fresh water fishes smell the same as the sea fishes, Malcolm?" she asked.
"Indeed I am not certain, my lady. Why?"
"Because if they do, – You remember what you said to me as we passed the sawmill in the wood?"
It was by silence Malcolm showed he did remember.
"Does not this night remind you of that one at Wastbeach when we came upon you singing?" said Clementina.
"It is like it, my lady – now. But a little ago, before I saw you, I was thinking of that night, and thinking how different this was."
Again a moon filled silence fell; and once more it was the lady who broke it.
"Do you know who are at the house?" she asked.
"I do, my lady," he replied.
"I had not been there more than an hour or two," she went on, "when they arrived. I suppose Florimel – Lady Lossie thought I would not come if she told me she expected them."
"And would you have come, my lady?"
"I cannot endure the earl."
"Neither can I. But then I know more about him than your ladyship does, and I am miserable for my mistress."
It stung Clementina as if her heart had taken a beat backward. But her voice was steadier than it had yet been as she returned – "Why should you be miserable for Lady Lossie?"
"I would die rather than see her marry that wretch," he answered.
Again her blood stung her in the left side.
"You do not want her to marry, then?" she said.
"I do," answered Malcolm, emphatically, "but not that fellow."
"Whom then, if I may ask?" ventured Clementina, trembling.
But Malcolm was silent He did not feel it would be right to say. Clementina turned sick at heart.
"I have heard there is something dangerous about the moonlight," she said. "I think it does not suit me tonight. I will go – home."
Malcolm sprung to his feet and offered his hand. She did not take it, but rose more lightly, though more slowly than he.
"How did you come from the park, my lady?" he asked.
"By a gate over there," she answered, pointing. "I wandered out after dinner, and the sea drew me."
"If your ladyship will allow me, I will take you a much nearer way back," he said.
"Do then," she returned.
He thought she spoke a little sadly, and set it down to her hating to go back to her fellow guests. What if she should leave tomorrow morning! he thought He could never then be sure she had really been with him that night. He must then sometimes think it a dream. But oh, what a dream! He could thank God for it all his life, if he should never dream so again.
They walked across the grassy sand towards the tunnel in silence, he pondering what he could say that might comfort her and keep her from going so soon.
"My lady never takes me out with her now," he said at length.
He was going to add that, if she pleased, he could wait upon her with Kelpie, and show her the country. But then he saw that, if she were not with Florimel, his sister would be riding everywhere alone with Liftore. Therefore he stopped short.
"And you feel forsaken – deserted?" returned Clementina, sadly still.
"Rather, my lady."
They had reached the tunnel. It looked very black when he opened the door, but there was just a glimmer through the trees at the other end.
"This is the valley of the shadow of death," she said. "Do I walk straight through?"
"Yes, my lady. You will soon come out in the light again," he said.
"Are there no steps to fall down?" she asked.
"None, my lady. But I will go first if you wish."
"No, that would but cut off the little light I have," she said. "Come beside me."
They passed through in silence, save for the rustle of her dress, and the dull echo that haunted their steps. In a few moments they came out among the trees, but both continued silent. The still, thoughtful moonlight seemed to press them close together, but neither knew that the other felt the same.
They reached a point in the road where another step would bring them in sight of the house.
"You cannot go wrong now, my lady," said Malcolm. "If you please I will go no farther."
"Do you not live in the house?" she asked.
"I used to do as I liked, and could be there or with my grandfather. I did mean to be at the House tonight, but my lady has given my room to her maid."
"What! that woman Caley?"
"I suppose so, my lady. I must sleep tonight in the village. If you could, my lady," he added, after a pause, and faltered, hesitating. She did not help him, but waited. "If you could – if you would not be displeased at my asking you," he resumed, "– if you could keep my lady from going farther with that – I shall call him names if I go on."
"It is a strange request," Clementina replied, after a moment's reflection. "I hardly know, as the guest of Lady Lossie, what answer I ought to make to it. One thing I will say, however, that, though you may know more of the man than I, you can hardly dislike him more. Whether I can interfere is another matter. Honestly, I do not think it would be of any use. But I do not say I will not. Good night."
She hurried away, and did not again offer her hand.
Malcolm walked back through the tunnel, his heart singing and making melody. Oh how lovely, how more than lovely, how divinely beautiful she was! And so kind and friendly! Yet she seemed just the least bit fitful too. Something troubled her, he said to himself. But he little thought that he, and no one else, had spoiled the moonlight for her. He went home to glorious dreams – she to a troubled half wakeful night. Not until she had made up her mind to do her utmost to rescue Florimel from Liftore, even if it gave her to Malcolm, did she find a moment's quiet. It was morning then, but she fell fast asleep, slept late, and woke refreshed.
CHAPTER LXIII: CONFESSION OF SIN
Mr Crathie was slowly recovering, but still very weak. He did not, after having turned the corner, get well so fast as his medical minister judged he ought, and the reason was plain to Lizzy, dimly perceptible to his wife: he was ill at ease. A man may have more mind and more conscience, and more discomfort in both or either, than his neighbours give him credit for. They may be in the right about him up to a certain point in his history, but then a crisis, by them unperceived, perhaps to them inappreciable, arrived, after which the man to all eternity could never be the same as they had known him. Such a change must appear improbable, and save on the theory of a higher operative power, is improbable because impossible. But a man who has not created himself can never secure himself against the inroad of the glorious terror of that Goodness which was able to utter him into being, with all its possible wrongs and repentances. The fact that a man has never, up to any point yet, been aware of aught beyond himself, cannot shut him out who is beyond him, when at last he means to enter. Not even the soul benumbing visits of his clerical minister could repress the swell of the slow mounting dayspring in the soul of the hard, commonplace, business worshipping man, Hector Crathie.
The hireling would talk to him kindly enough – of his illness, or of events of the day, especially those of the town and neighbourhood, and encourage him with reiterated expression of the hope that ere many days they would enjoy a tumbler together as of old, but as to wrong done, apology to make, forgiveness to be sought, or consolation to be found, the dumb dog had not uttered a bark.
The sources of the factor's restless discomfort were now two; the first, that he had lifted his hand to women; the second, the old ground of his quarrel with Malcolm, brought up by Lizzy.
All his life, since ever he had had business, Mr Crathie had prided himself on his honesty, and was therefore in one of the most dangerous moral positions a man could occupy – ruinous even to the honesty itself. Asleep in the mud, he dreamed himself awake on a pedestal. At best such a man is but perched on a needle point when he thinketh he standeth. Of him who prided himself on his honour I should expect that one day, in the long run it might be, he would do some vile thing. Not, probably, within the small circle of illumination around his wretched rushlight, but in the great region beyond it, of what to him is a moral darkness, or twilight vague, he may be or may become capable of doing a deed that will stink in the nostrils of the universe – and in his own when he knows it as it is. The honesty in which a man can pride himself must be a small one, for more honesty will ever reveal more defect, while perfect honesty will never think of itself at all. The limited honesty of the factor clave to the interests of his employers, and let the rights he encountered take care of themselves. Those he dealt with were to him rather as enemies than friends, not enemies to be prayed for, but to be spoiled. Malcolm's doctrine of honesty in horse dealing was to him ludicrously new. His notion of honesty in that kind was to cheat the buyer for his master if he could, proud to write in his book a large sum against the name of the animal. He would have scorned in his very soul the idea of making a farthing by it himself through any business quirk whatever, but he would not have been the least ashamed if, having sold Kelpie, he had heard – let me say after a week of possession – that she had dashed out her purchaser's brains. He would have been a little shocked, a little sorry perhaps, but nowise ashamed. "By this time," he would have said, "the man ought to have been up to her, and either taken care of himself – or sold her again," – to dash out another man's brains instead!
That the bastard Malcolm, or the ignorant and indeed fallen fisher girl Lizzy, should judge differently, nowise troubled him: what could they know about the rights and wrongs of business? The fact which Lizzy sought to bring to bear upon him, that our Lord would not have done such a thing, was to him no argument at all. He said to himself with the superior smile of arrogated common sense, that "no mere man since the fall" could be expected to do like him; that he was divine, and had not to fight for a living; that he set us an example that we might see what sinners we were; that religion was one thing, and a very proper thing, but business was another, and a very proper thing also – with customs and indeed laws of its own far more determinate, at least definite, than those of religion, and that to mingle the one with the other was not merely absurd – it was irreverent and wrong, and certainly never intended in the Bible, which must surely be common sense.
It was the Bible always with him, – never the will of Christ. But although he could dispose of the question thus satisfactorily, yet, as he lay ill, supine, without any distracting occupation, the thing haunted him.
Now in his father's cottage had lain, much dabbled in of the children, a certain boardless copy of the Pilgrim's Progress, round in the face and hollow in the back, in which, amongst other pictures was one of the Wicket Gate. This scripture of his childhood, given by inspiration of God, threw out, in one of his troubled and feverish nights, a dream bud in the brain of the man. He saw the face of Jesus looking on him over the top of the Wicket Gate, at which he had been for some time knocking in vain, while the cruel dog barked loud from the enemy's yard. But that face, when at last it came, was full of sorrowful displeasure. And in his heart he knew that it was because of a certain transaction in horse dealing, wherein he had hitherto lauded his own cunning – adroitness, he considered it – and success. One word only he heard from the lips of the Man – "Worker of iniquity," – and woke with a great start. From that moment truths began to be facts to him. The beginning of the change was indeed very small, but every beginning is small, and every beginning is a creation. Monad, molecule, protoplasm, whatever word may be attached to it when it becomes appreciable by men, being then, however many stages, I believe, upon its journey, beginning is an irrepressible fact; and however far from good or humble even after many days, the man here began to grow good and humble. His dull unimaginative nature, a perfect lumber room of the world and its rusting affairs, had received a gift in a dream – a truth from the lips of the Lord, remodelled in the brain and heart of the tinker of Elstow, and sent forth in his wondrous parable to be pictured and printed, and lie in old Hector Crathie's cottage, that it might enter and lie in young Hector Crathie's brain until he grew old and had done wrong enough to heed it, when it rose upon him in a dream, and had its way. Henceforth the claims of his neighbour began to reveal themselves, and his mind to breed conscientious doubts and scruples, with which, struggle as he might against it, a certain respect for Malcolm would keep coming and mingling – a feeling which grew with its returns, until, by slow changes, he began at length to regard him as the minister of God's vengeance – for his punishment, – and perhaps salvation – who could tell?
Lizzy's nightly ministrations had not been resumed, but she often called, and was a good deal with him; for Mrs Crathie had learned to like the humble, helpful girl still better when she found she had taken no offence at being deprived of her post of honour by his bedside. One day, when Malcolm was seated, mending a net, among the thin grass and great red daisies of the links by the bank of the burn, where it crossed the sands from the Lossie grounds to the sea, Lizzy came up to him and said,
"The factor wad like to see ye, Ma'colm, as sune's ye can gang till 'im."
She waited no reply. Malcolm rose and went
At the factor's, the door was opened by Mrs Crathie herself, who, looking mysterious, led him to the dining room, where she plunged at once into business, doing her best to keep down all manifestation of the profound resentment she cherished against him. Her manner was confidential, almost coaxing.
"Ye see, Ma'colm," she said, as if pursuing instead of commencing a conversation, "he's some sore about the little fraicass between him 'an you. Jest make your apoalogies till 'im and tell 'im you had a drop too much, and your soary for misbehavin' yerself to wann sae much your shuperrior. Tell him that, Ma'colm, an' there's a half croon to ye."
She wished much to speak English, and I have tried to represent the thing she did speak, which was neither honest Scotch nor anything like English. Alas! the good, pithy, old Anglo Saxon dialect is fast perishing, and a jargon of corrupt English taking its place.
"But, mem," said Malcolm, taking no notice either of the coin or the words that accompanied the offer of it, "I canna lee. I wasna in drink, an' I'm no sorry."
"Hoot!" returned Mrs Crathie, blurting out her Scotch fast enough now, "I s' warran' ye can lee well eneuch whan ye ha'e occasion. Tak' yer siller, an' du as I tell ye."
"Wad ye ha'e me damned, mem?"
Mrs Crathie gave a cry and held up her hands. She was too well accustomed to imprecations from the lips of her husband for any but an affected horror, but, regarding the honest word as a bad one, she assumed an air of injury.
"Wad ye daur to sweir afore a leddy," she exclaimed, shaking her uplifted hands in pretence of ghasted astonishment.
"If Mr Crathie wishes to see me, ma'am," rejoined Malcolm, taking up the shield of English, "I am ready. If not, please allow me to go."
The same moment the bell whose rope was at the head of the factor's bed, rang violently, and Mrs Crathie's importance collapsed.
"Come this w'y," she said, and turning led him up the stair to the room where her husband lay.
Entering, Malcolm stood astonished at the change he saw upon the strong man of rubicund countenance, and his heart filled with compassion. The factor was sitting up in bed, looking very white and worn and troubled. Even his nose had grown thin and white. He held out his hand to him, and said to his wife, "Tak the door to ye, Mistress Crathie," indicating which side he wished it closed from.
"Ye was some sair upo' me, Ma'colm," he went on, grasping the youth's hand.
"I doobt I was ower sair," said Malcolm, who could hardly speak for a lump in his throat.
"Weel, I deserved it. But eh, Ma'colm! I canna believe it was me: it bude to be the drink."
"It was the drink," rejoined Malcolm; "an' eh sir! afore ye rise frae that bed, sweir to the great God 'at ye'll never drink nae mair drams, nor onything 'ayont ae tum'ler at a sittin'."
"I sweir't; I sweir't, Ma'colm!" cried the factor.
"It's easy to sweir't noo, sir, but whan ye're up again it'll be hard to keep yer aith. – O Lord!" spoke the youth, breaking out into almost involuntary prayer, "help this man to haud troth wi' thee. – An' noo, Maister Crathie," he resumed, "I'm yer servan', ready to do onything I can. Forgi'e me, sir, for layin' on ower sair."
"I forgi'e ye wi' a' my hert," returned the factor, inly delighted to have something to forgive.
"I thank ye frae mine," answered Malcolm, and again they shook hands.
"But eh, Ma'colm, my man!" said the factor, "hoo will I ever shaw my face again?"
"Fine that!" returned Malcolm, eagerly. "Fowk's terrible guid natur'd whan ye alloo 'at ye're i' the wrang. I do believe 'at whan a man confesses till 's neebour, an' says he's sorry, he thinks mair o' 'im nor afore he did it. Ye see we a' ken we ha'e dune wrang, but we ha'ena a' confessed. An' it's a queer thing, but a man'll think it gran' o' 's neebour to confess, whan a' the time there's something he winna repent o' himsel' for fear o' the shame o' ha'ein' to confess 't. To me, the shame lies in no confessin' efter ye ken ye're wrang. Ye'll see, sir, the fisher fowk 'll min' what ye say to them a heap better noo."
"Div ye railly think it, Ma'colm?" sighed the factor with a flush.
"I div that, sir. Only whan ye grow better, gien ye'll alloo me to say't, sir, ye maunna lat Sawtan temp' ye to think 'at this same repentin' was but a wakeness o' the flesh, an' no an enlichtenment o' the speerit."
"I s' tie mysel' up till 't," cried the factor, eagerly. "Gang an' tell them i' my name, 'at I tak' back ilka scart o' a nottice I ever ga'e ane o' them to quit, only we maun ha'e nae mair stan'in' o' honest fowk 'at comes to bigg herbours till them. – Div ye think it wad be weel ta'en gien ye tuik a poun' nott the piece to the twa women?"
"I wadna du that, sir, gien I was you," answered Malcolm. "For yer ain sake, I wadna to Mistress Mair, for naething wad gar her tak' it – it wad only affront her; an' for Nancy Tacket's sake, I wadna to her, for as her name so's her natur': she wad not only tak it, but she wad lat ye play the same as aften 's ye likit for less siller. Ye'll ha'e mony a chance o' makin' 't up to them baith, ten times ower, afore you an' them pairt, sir."
"I maun lea' the cuintry, Ma'colm."
"'Deed, sir, ye'll du naething o' the kin'. The fishers themsel's wad rise, no to lat ye, as they did wi' Blew Peter! As sune's ye're able to be aboot again, ye'll see plain eneuch 'at there's no occasion for onything like that, sir. Portlossie wadna ken 'tsel' wantin' ye. Jist gie me a commission to say to the twa honest women 'at ye're sorry for what ye did, an' that's a' 'at need be said 'atween you an them, or their men aither."
The result showed that Malcolm was right; for, the very next day, instead of looking for gifts from him, the two injured women came to the factor's door, first Annie Mair, with the offering of a few fresh eggs, scarce at the season, and after her Nancy Tacket, with a great lobster.