Malcolm Part 88

"There 's naither c.o.c.k craw nor bill rair intill 't my lord. I c.u.m to you wi' 't i' the houp ye 'll help to redd (clear) it up, for I dinna weel ken what we can du wantin' ye. There 's but ane kens a' the truth o' 't, an' she 's the awfu'es leear oot o' purgatory --no 'at I believe in purgatory, but it 's the langer an' lichter word to mak' use o'."

"Who is she?"

"By name she's Bauby Cat'nach, an' by natur' she's what I tell ye --an' gien I had her 'atween my twa een, it 's what I wad say to the face o' her."

"It can't be MacPhail! Mrs Stewart says he is her son, and the woman Catanach is her chief witness in support of the claim."

"The deevil has a better to the twa o' them, my lord, as they 'll ken some day. His claim 'll want nae supportin'. Dinna ye believe a word Mistress Stewart or Bauby Catanach aither wad say to ye.-- Gien he be Mistress Stewart's, wha was his father?"

"You think he resembles my late brother: he has a look of him, I confess."

"He has, my lord. But onybody 'at kent the mither o' 'im, as you an' me did, my lord, wad see anither lik'ness as weel."

"I grant nothing."

"Ye grant Grizel Cam'ell yer wife, my lord, whan ye own to that wreet. Gien 't war naething but a written promise an' a bairn to follow, it wad be merriage eneuch i' this cuintry, though it mayna be in cuintries no sae ceevileest."

"But all that is nothing as to the child. Why do you fix on this young fellow? You say you can't prove it."

"But ye cud, my lord, gien ye war as set upo' justice as I am. Gien ye winna muv i' the maitter, we s' manage to hirple (go halting) throu' wantin ye, though, wi' the Lord's help."

The marquis, who had all this time continued his walk up and down the floor, stood still, raised his head as if about to speak, dropped it again on his chest, strode to the other window, turned, strode back, and said,

"This is a very serious matter."

"It's a' that, my lord," replied Miss Horn.

"You must give me a little time to turn it over," said the marquis.

"Isna twenty year time eneuch, my lord?" rejoined Miss Horn.

"I swear to you that till this moment I believed her twenty years in her grave. My brother sent me word that she died in childbed, and the child with her. I was then in Brussels with the Duke."

Miss Horn made three great strides, caught the marquis's hand in both hers, and said, "I praise G.o.d ye 're an honest man, my lord."

"I hope so," said the marquis, and seized the advantage "You'll hold your tongue about this ?" he added, half inquiring, half requesting.

"As lang as I see rizzon, my lord, nae langer," answered Miss Horn, dropping his hand. "Richt maun be dune."

"Yes--if you can tell what right is, and avoid wrong to others."

"Richt 's richt, my lord," persisted Miss Horn. "I 'll hae nae modifi-qualifications!"

His lordship once more began to walk up and down the room every now and then taking a stolen glance at Miss Horn, a glance of uneasy anxious questioning. She stood rigid--a very Lot's wife of immobility, her eyes on the ground, waiting what he would say next.

"I wish I knew whether I could trust her," he said at length, as if talking aloud to himself.

Miss Horn took no notice.

"Why don't you speak, woman?" cried the marquis with irritation.

How he hated perplexity!

"Ye speired nae queston, my lord; an' gien ye had, my word has ower little weicht to answer wi'."

"Can I trust you, woman--I want to know," said his lordship angrily.

"No far'er, my lord, nor to du what I think 's richt."

"I want to be certain that you will do nothing with those letters until you hear from me?" said the marquis, heedless of her reply.

"I 'll du naething afore the morn. Far'er nor that I winna pledge mysel'," answered Miss Horn, and with the words moved towards the door.

"Hadn't you better take this with you?" said the marquis, offering the little note, which he had carried all the time between his finger and thumb.

"There 's nae occasion. I hae plenty wantin' that. Only dinna lea'

't lyin' aboot."

"There 's small danger of that," said the marquis, and rang the bell.

The moment she was out of the way, he went up to his own room, and, flinging the door to, sat down at the table, and laid his arms and head upon it. The acrid vapour of tears that should have been wept long since, rose to his eyes: he dashed his hand across them, as if ashamed that he was not even yet out of sight of the kingdom of heaven. His own handwriting, of a period when all former sins and defilements seemed about to be burned clean from his soul by the fire of an honest and virtuous love, had moved him; for genuine had been his affection for the girl who had risked and lost so much for him. It was with no evil intent, for her influence had rendered him for the time incapable of playing her false, but in part from reasons of prudence, as he persuaded himself, for both their sakes, and in part led astray by the zest which minds of a certain cast derive from the secrecy of pleasure, that he had persuaded her to the unequal yoking of honesty and secrecy. But, suddenly called away and sent by the Prince on a private mission, soon after their marriage, and before there was any special reason to apprehend consequences that must lead to discovery, he had, in the difficulties of the case and the hope of a speedy return, left her without any arrangement for correspondence and all he had ever heard of her more was from his brother, then the marquis--a cynical account of the discovery of her condition, followed almost immediately by a circ.u.mstantial one of her death and that of her infant. He was deeply stung and the thought of her sufferings in the false position where his selfishness had placed her, haunted him for a time beyond his endurance--for of all things he hated suffering, and of all sufferings remorse is the worst. Hence, where a wiser man might have repented, he rushed into dissipation, whose scorching wind swept away not only the healing dews of his sorrow, but the tender buds of new life that had begun to mottle the withering tree of his nature. The desire after better things which had, under his wife's genial influence, begun to pa.s.s into effort, not only vanished utterly in the shameless round of evil distraction, but its memory became a mockery to the cynical spirit that arose behind the vanishing angel of repentance; and he was soon in the condition of the man from whom the exorcised demon had gone but to find his seven worse companions.

Reduced at length to straits--almost to want, he had married the mother of Florimel, to whom for a time he endeavoured to conduct himself in some measure like a gentleman. For this he had been rewarded by a decrease in the rate of his spiritual submergence, but his bedraggled nature could no longer walk without treading on its own plumes; and the poor lady who had bartered herself for a lofty alliance, speedily found her mistake a sad one and her life uninteresting, took to repining and tears, alienated her husband utterly, and died of a sorrow almost too selfish to afford even a suggestion of purifying efficacy. But Florimel had not inherited immediately from her mother, so far as disposition was concerned; in these latter days she had grown very dear to him, and his love had once more turned his face a little towards the path of righteousness.

Ah! when would he move one step to set his feet in it?

And now, after his whirlwind harvest of evil knowledge, bitter disappointment, and fading pa.s.sion, in the gathering mists of gray hopelessness, and the far worse mephitic air of indifference, he had come all of a sudden upon the ghastly discovery that, while overwhelmed with remorse for the vanished past, the present and the future had been calling him, but had now also--that present and that future--glided from him, and folded their wings of gloom in the land of shadows. All the fierce time he might have been blessedly growing better, instead of heaping sin upon sin until the weight was too heavy for repentance; for, while he had been bemoaning a dead wife, that wife had been loving a renegade husband!

And the blame of it all he did not fail to cast upon that Providence in which until now he had professed not to believe: such faith as he was yet capable of, awoke in the form of resentment! He judged himself hardly done by; and the few admonitory sermons he had happened to hear, especially that in the cave about the dogs going round the walls of the New Jerusalem, returned upon him, not as warnings, but as old threats now rapidly approaching fulfilment.

Lovely still peered the dim face of his girl wife upon him, through the dusty lattice of his memory; and a mighty corroboration of Malcolm's a.s.serted birth lay in the look upon his face as he hurried aghast from the hermit's cell; for not on his first had the marquis seen that look and in those very circ.u.mstances! And the youth was one to be proud of--one among a million! But there were other and terrible considerations.

Incapable as he naturally was of doing justice to a woman of Miss Horn's inflexibility in right, he could yet more than surmise the absoluteness of that inflexibility--partly because it was hostile to himself, and he was in the mood to believe in opposition and harshness, and deny--not providence, but goodness. Convenient half measures would, he more than feared, find no favour with her. But she had declared her inability to prove Malcolm his son without the testimony of Mrs Catanach, and the latter was even now representing him as the son of Mrs Stewart! That Mrs Catanach at the same time could not be ignorant of what had become of the child born to him, he was all but certain; for, on that night when Malcolm and he found her in the wizard's chamber, had she not proved her strange story--of having been carried to that very room blindfolded, and, after sole attendance on the birth of a child, whose mother's features, even in her worst pains, she had not once seen, in like manner carried away again,--had she not proved the story true by handing him the ring she had drawn from the lady's finger, and sewn, for the sake of future identification, into the lower edge of one of the bed curtains--which ring was a diamond he had given his wife from his own finger when they parted? She probably believed the lady to have been Mrs Stewart, and the late marquis the father of the child. Should he see Mrs Catanach? And what then?

He found no difficulty in divining the reasons which must have induced his brother to provide for the secret accouchement of his wife in the wizard's chamber, and for the abduction of the child --if indeed his existence was not owing to Mrs Catanach's love of intrigue. The elder had judged the younger brother unlikely to live long, and had expected his own daughter to succeed himself.

But now the younger might any day marry the governess, and legalize the child; and the elder had therefore secured the disappearance of the latter, and the belief of his brother in the death of both.

Lord Lossie was roused from his reverie by a tap at the door, which he knew for Malcolm's, and answered with admission.

When he entered, his master saw that a change had pa.s.sed upon him, and for a moment believed Miss Horn had already broken faith with him and found communication with Malcolm. He was soon satisfied of the contrary, however, but would have found it hard indeed to understand, had it been represented to him, that the contentment, almost elation, of the youth's countenance had its source in the conviction that he was not the son of Mrs Stewart.

"So here you are at last!" said the marquis.

"Ay, my lord."

"Did you find Stewart?"

"Ay did we at last, my lord; but we made naething by 't, for he kent noucht aboot the la.s.sie, an 'maist lost his wuts at the news."

"No great loss, that!" said the marquis. "Go and send Stoat here."