CHAPTER LXIV: A VISITATION
Malcolm's custom was, first, immediately after breakfast, to give Kelpie her airing – and a tremendous amount of air she wanted for the huge animal furnace of her frame, and the fiery spirit that kept it alight; then, returning to the Seaton, to change the dress of the groom, in which he always appeared about the house, lest by any chance his mistress should want him, for that of the fisherman, and help with the nets, or the boats, or in whatever was going on. As often as he might he did what seldom a man would – went to the long shed where the women prepared the fish for salting, took a knife, and wrought as deftly as any of them, throwing a marvellously rapid succession of cleaned herrings into the preserving brine. It was no wonder he was a favourite with the women. Although, however, the place was malodorous and the work dirty, I cannot claim so much for Malcolm as may at first appear to belong to him, for he had been accustomed to the sight and smell from earliest childhood. Still, as I say, it was work the men would not do. He had such a chivalrous humanity that it was misery to him to see man or woman at anything scorned, except he bore a hand himself. He did it half in love, half in terror of being unjust.
He had gone to Mr Crathie in his fisher clothes, thinking it better the sick man should not be reminded of the cause of his illness more forcibly than could not be helped. The nearest way led past a corner of the house overlooked by one of the drawing room windows, Clementina saw him, and, judging by his garb that he would probably return presently, went out in the hope of meeting him; and as he was going back to his net by the sea gate, he caught sight of her on the opposite side of the burn, accompanied only by a book. He walked through the burn, climbed the bank, and approached her.
It was a hot summer afternoon. The burn ran dark and brown and cool in deep shade, but the sea beyond was glowing in light, and the laburnum blossoms hung like cocoons of sunbeams. No breath of air was stirring; no bird sang; the sun was burning high in the west. Clementina stood waiting him, like a moon that could hold her own in the face of the sun.
"Malcolm," she said, "I have been watching all day, but have not found a single opportunity of speaking to your mistress as you wished. But to tell the truth, I am not sorry, for the more I think about it, the less I see what to say. That another does not like a person, can have little weight with one who does, and I know nothing against him. I wish you would release me from my promise. It is such an ugly thing to speak to one's hostess to the disadvantage of a fellow guest!"
"I understand," said Malcolm. "It was not a right thing to ask of you. I beg your pardon, my lady, and give you back your promise, if such you count it. But indeed I do not think you promised."
"Thank you, I would rather be free. Had it been before you left London – Lady Lossie is very kind, but does not seem to put the same confidence in me as formerly. She and Lady Bellair and that man make a trio, and I am left outside. I almost think I ought to go. Even Caley is more of a friend than I am. I cannot get rid of the suspicion that something not right is going on. There seems a bad air about the place. Those two are playing their game with the inexperience of that poor child, your mistress."
"I know that very well, my lady, but I hope yet they will not win," said Malcolm.
By this time they were near the tunnel.
"Could you let me through to the shore?" asked Clementina.
"Certainly, my lady. – I wish you could see the boats go out. From the Boar's Tail it is a pretty sight. They will all be starting together as soon as the tide turns."
Thereupon Clementina began questioning him about the night fishing, and Malcolm described its pleasures and dangers, and the pleasures of its dangers, in such fashion that Clementina listened with delight. He dwelt especially on the feeling almost of disembodiment, and existence as pure thought, arising from the all pervading clarity and fluidity, the suspension, and the unceasing motion.
"I wish I could once feel like that," exclaimed Clementina. "Could I not go with you – for one night – just for once, Malcolm?"
"My lady, it would hardly do, I am afraid. If you knew the discomforts that must assail one unaccustomed – I cannot tell – but I doubt if you would go. All the doors to bliss have their defences of swamps and thorny thickets through which alone they can be gained. You would need to be a fisherman's sister – or wife, I fear, my lady, to get through to this one."
Clementina smiled gravely, but did not reply, and Malcolm too was silent, thinking.
"Yes," he said at last, "I see how we can manage it. You shall have a boat for your own use, my lady, and –"
"But I want to see just what you see, and to feel, as nearly as I may, what you feel. I don't want a downy, rose leaf notion of the thing. I want to understand what you fishermen encounter and experience."
"We must make a difference though, my lady. Look what clothes, what boots we fishers must wear to be fit for our work! But you shall have a true idea as far as it reaches, and one that will go a long way towards enabling you to understand the rest. You shall go in a real fishing boat, with a full crew and all the nets, and you shall catch real herrings; only you shall not be out longer than you please. – But there is hardly time to arrange for it tonight, my lady."
"Tomorrow then?"
"Yes. I have no doubt I can manage it then."
"Oh, thank you!" said Clementina. "It will be a great delight."
"And now," suggested Malcolm, "would you like to go through the village, and see some of the cottages, and how the fishers live?"
"If they would not think me inquisitive, or intrusive," answered Clementina.
"There is no danger of that," rejoined Malcolm. "If it were my Lady Bellair, to patronize, and deal praise and blame, as if what she calls poverty were fault and childishness, and she their spiritual as well as social superior, they might very likely be what she would call rude. She was here once before, and we have some notion of her about the Seaton. I venture to say there is not a woman in it who is not her moral superior, and many of them are her superiors in intellect and true knowledge, if they are not so familiar with London scandal. Mr Graham says that in the kingdom of heaven every superior is a ruler, for there to rule is to raise, and a man's rank is his power to uplift."
"I would I were in the kingdom of heaven, if it be such as you and Mr Graham take it for," said Clementina.
"You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is."
"Can one then be in it, and yet seem to be out of it, Malcolm?"
"So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way with some."
"Are you not uncharitable, Malcolm?"
"Our Lord speaks of many coming up to his door confident of admission, whom yet he sends from him. Faith is obedience, not confidence."
"Then I do well to fear."
"Yes, my lady, so long as your fear makes you knock the louder."
"But if I be in, as you say, how can I go on knocking?"
"There are a thousand more doors to knock at after you are in, my lady. No one content to stand just inside the gate will be inside it long. But it is one thing to be in, and another to be satisfied that we are in. Such a satisfying as comes from our own feelings may, you see from what our Lord says, be a false one. It is one thing to gather the conviction for ourselves, and another to have it from God. What wise man would have it before he gives it? He who does what his Lord tells him, is in the kingdom, if every feeling of heart or brain told him he was out. And his Lord will see that he knows it one day. But I do not think, my lady, one can ever be quite sure, until the king himself has come in to sup with him, and has let him know that he is altogether one with him."
During the talk of which this is the substance, they reached the Seaton, and Malcolm took her to see his grandfather.
"Taal and faer and chentle and coot!" murmured the old man as he held her hand for a moment in his. With a start of suspicion he dropped it, and cried out in alarm – "She'll not pe a Cam'ell, Malcolm?"
"Na, na, daddy – far frae that," answered Malcolm.
"Then my laty will pe right welcome to Tuncan's heart," he replied, and taking her hand again led her to a chair.
When they left, she expressed herself charmed with the piper, but when she learned the cause of his peculiar behaviour at first, she looked grave, and found his feeling difficult to understand.
They next visited the Partaness, with whom she was far more amused than puzzled. But her heart was drawn to the young woman who sat in a corner, rocking her child in its wooden cradle, and never lifting her eyes from her needlework: she knew her for the fisher girl of Malcolm's picture.
From house to house he took her, and where they went, they were welcomed. If the man was smoking, he put away his pipe, and the woman left her work and sat down to talk with her. They did the honours of their poor houses in a homely and dignified fashion. Clementina was delighted. But Malcolm told her he had taken her only to the best houses in the place to begin with. The village, though a fair sample of fishing villages, was no ex-sample, he said: there were all kinds of people in it as in every other. It was a class in the big life school of the world, whose special masters were the sea and the herrings.
"What would you do now, if you were lord of the place?" asked Clementina, as they were walking back by the sea gate; "– I mean, what would be the first thing you would do?"
"As it would be my business to know my tenants that I might rule them," he answered, "I would first court the society and confidence of the best men among them. I should be in no hurry to make changes, but would talk openly with them, and try to be worthy of their confidence. Of course I would see a little better to their houses, and improve their harbour: and I would build a boat for myself that would show them a better kind; but my main hope for them would be the same as for myself – the knowledge of him whose is the sea and all its store, who cares for every fish in its bosom, but for the fisher more than many herrings. I would spend my best efforts to make them follow him whose first servants were the fishermen of Galilee, for with all my heart I believe that that Man holds the secret of life, and that only the man who obeys him can ever come to know the God who is the root and crown of our being, and whom to know is freedom and bliss."
A pause followed.
"But do you not sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work?" asked Clementina.
"Not very hard, my lady. Sometimes I wake up to find that I have been in an evil mood and forgetting him, and then life is hard until I get near him again. But it is not my work that makes me forget him. When I go a-fishing, I go to catch God's fish; when I take Kelpie out, I am teaching one of God's wild creatures; when I read the Bible or Shakspere, I am listening to the word of God, uttered in each after its kind. When the wind blows on my face, what matter that the chymist pulls it to pieces! He cannot hurt it, for his knowledge of it cannot make my feeling of it a folly, so long as he cannot pull that to pieces with his retorts and crucibles: it is to me the wind of him who makes it blow, the sign of something in him, the fit emblem of his spirit, that breathes into my spirit the breath of life. When Mr Graham talks to me, it is a prophet come from God that teaches me, as certainly as if his fiery chariot were waiting to carry him back when he had spoken; for the word he utters at once humbles and uplifts my soul, telling it that God is all in all and my God – that the Lord Christ is the truth and the life, and the way home to the Father."
After a little pause,
"And when you are talking to a rich, ignorant, proud lady?" said Clementina, "– what do you feel then?"
"That I would it were my lady Clementina instead," answered Malcolm with a smile.
She held her peace.
When he left her, Malcolm hurried to Scaurnose and arranged with Blue Peter for his boat and crew the next night. Returning to his grandfather, he found a note waiting him from Mrs Courthope, to the effect that, as Miss Caley, her ladyship's maid, had preferred another room, there was no reason why, if he pleased, he should not re-occupy his own.
CHAPTER LXV: THE EVE OF THE CRISIS
It was late in the sweetest of summer mornings when the Partan's boat slipped slowly back with a light wind to the harbour of Portlossie. Malcolm did not wait to land the fish, but having changed his clothes and taken breakfast with Duncan, who was always up early, went to look after Kelpie. When he had done with her, finding some of the household already in motion, he went through the kitchen, and up the old corkscrew stone stair to his room to have the sleep he generally had before his breakfast. Presently came a knock at his door, and there was Rose.
The girl's behaviour to Malcolm was much changed. The conviction had been strengthened in her that he was not what he seemed, and she regarded him now with a vague awe. She looked this way and that along the passage, with fear in her eyes, then stepped timidly inside the room to tell him, in a hurried whisper, that she had seen the woman who gave her the poisonous philtre, talking to Caley the night before, at the foot of the bridge, after everybody else was in bed. She had been miserable till she could warn him. He thanked her heartily, and said he would be on his guard; he would neither eat nor drink in the house. She crept softly away. He secured the door, lay down, and trying to think fell asleep.
When he woke his brain was clear. The very next day, whether Lenorme came or not, he would declare himself. That night he would go fishing with Lady Clementina, but not one day longer would he allow those people to be about his sister. Who could tell what might not be brewing, or into what abyss, with the help of her friends, the woman Catanach might not plunge Florimel?
He rose, took Kelpie out, and had a good gallop. On his way back he saw in the distance Florimel riding with Liftore. The earl was on his father's bay mare. He could not endure the sight, and dashed home at full speed.
Learning from Rose that Lady Clementina was in the flower garden, he found her at the swan basin, feeding the gold and silver fishes. An under gardener who had been about the place for thirty years, was at work not far off. The light splash of the falling column which the marble swan spouted from its upturned beak, prevented her from hearing his approach until he was close behind her. She turned, and her fair face took the flush of a white rose.
"My lady," he said, "I have got everything arranged for tonight."
"And when shall we go?" she asked eagerly.
"At the turn of the tide, about half past seven. But seven is your dinner hour."
"It is of no consequence. – But could you not make it half an hour later, and then I should not seem rude?"
"Make it any hour you please, my lady, so long as the tide is falling."
"Let it be eight then, and dinner will be almost over. They will not miss me after that. Mr Cairns is going to dine with them. I think, except Liftore, I never disliked a man so much. Shall I tell them where I am going?"
"Yes, my lady. It will be better. – They will look amazed – for all their breeding!"
"Whose boat is it, that I may be able to tell them if they should ask me?"
"Joseph Mair's. He and his wife will come and fetch you. Annie Mair will go with us – if I may say us: will you allow me to go in your boat, my lady?"
"I couldn't go without you, Malcolm."
"Thank you, my lady. Indeed I don't know how I could let you go without me! Not that there is anything to fear, or that I could make it the least safer; but somehow it seems my business to take care of you."
"Like Kelpie?" said Clementina, with a merrier smile than he had ever seen on her face before.
"Yes, my lady," answered Malcolm; "– if to do for you all and the best you will permit me to do, be to take care of you like Kelpie, then so it is."
Clementina gave a little sigh.
"Mind you don't scruple, my lady, to give what orders you please. It will be your fishing boat for tonight."
Clementina bowed her head in acknowledgment.
"And now, my lady," Malcolm went on, "just look about you for a moment. See this great vault of heaven, full of golden light raining on trees and flowers – every atom of air shining. Take the whole into your heart, that you may feel the difference at night, my lady – when the stars, and neither sun nor moon, will be in the sky, and all the flowers they shine on will be their own flitting, blinking, swinging, shutting and opening reflections in the swaying floor of the ocean, – when the heat will be gone, and the air clean and clear as the thoughts of a saint."
Clementina did as he said, and gazed above and around her on the glory of the summer day overhanging the sweet garden, and on the flowers that had just before been making her heart ache with their unattainable secret. But she thought with herself that if Malcolm and she but shared it with a common heart as well as neighboured eyes, gorgeous day and ethereal night, or snow clad wild and sky of stormy blackness, were alike welcome to her spirit.
As they talked they wandered up the garden, and had drawn near the spot where, in the side of the glen, was hollowed the cave of the hermit. They now turned towards the pretty arbour of moss that covered its entrance, each thinking the other led, but Malcolm not without reluctance. For how horribly and unaccountably had he not been shaken, the only time he ever entered it, at the sight of the hermit! The thing was a foolish wooden figure, no doubt, but the thought that it still sat over its book in the darkest corner of the cave, ready to rise and advance with outstretched hand to welcome its visitor, had, ever since then, sufficed to make him shudder. He was on the point of warning Clementina lest she too should be worse than startled, when he was arrested by the voice of John Jack, the old gardener, who came stooping after them, looking a sexton of flowers.
"Ma'colm, Ma'colm!" he cried, and crept up wheezing. "– I beg yer leddyship's pardon, my leddy, but I wadna ha'e Ma'colm lat ye gang in there ohn tellt ye what there is inside."
"Thank you, John. I was just going to tell my lady," said Malcolm.
"Because, ye see," pursued John, "I was ae day here i' the gairden – an' I was jist graftin' a bonny wull rose buss wi' a Hector o' France – an' it grew to be the bonniest rose buss in a' the haul gairden – whan the markis, no the auld markis, but my leddy's father, cam' up the walk there, an' a bonny young leddy wi' his lordship, as it micht be yersel's twa – an' I beg yer pardon, my leddy, but I'm an auld man noo, an' whiles forgets the differs 'atween fowk – an' this yoong leddy 'at they ca'd Miss Cam'ell – ye kenned her yersel' efterhin', I daursay, Ma'colm – he was unco ta'en with her, the markis, as ilka body cud see ohn luikit that near, sae 'at some saich 'at hoo he hed no richt to gang on wi' her that gait, garrin' her believe, gien he wasna gaein' to merry her. That's naither here nor there, hooever, seein' it a' cam' to jist naething ava'. Sae up they gaed to the cave yon'er, as I was tellin' ye; an' hoo it was, was a won'er, for I s' warran' she had been aboot the place near a towmon (twelvemonth), but never had she been intil that cave, and kenned no more nor the bairn unborn what there was in 't. An' sae whan the airemite, as the auld minister ca'd him, though what for he ca'd a muckle block like yon an airy mite, I'm sure I never cud fathom – whan he gat up, as I was sayin', an' cam' foret wi' his han' oot, she gae a scraich 'at jist garred my lugs dirl, an' doon she drappit, an' there, whan I ran up, was she lyin' i' the markis his airms, as white 's a cauk eemege, an' it was lang or he brought her till hersel', for he wadna lat me rin for the hoosekeeper, but sent me fleein' to the f'untain for watter, an' gied me a gowd guinea to haud my tongue aboot it a'. Sae noo, my leddy, ye're forewarnt, an' no ill can come to ye, for there's naething to be fleyt at whan ye ken what's gauin' to meet ye."
Malcolm had turned his head aside, and now moved on without remark. Struck by his silence, Clementina looked up, and saw his face very pale, and the tears standing in his eyes.
"You must tell me the sad story, Malcolm," she murmured. "I could scarcely understand a word the old man said."
He continued silent, and seemed struggling with some emotion. But when they were within a few paces of the arbour, he stopped short, and said – "I would rather not go in there today. You would oblige me, my lady, if you would not go."
She looked up at him again, with wonder but more concern in her lovely face, put her hand on his arm, gently turned him away, and walked back with him to the fountain. Not a word more did she say about the matter.