The Marquis of Lossie Part 20

An' gien ye wad sen' my wauges hame to my mither, sir, ye wad ken 'at I cudna be gauin' stravaguin', and drinkin' whan yer back was turn't."

"Well, I'll write to your mother, and see what she says," said Malcolm. "Now I want to tell you, both of you, that this yacht belongs to the Marchioness of Lossie, and I have the command of her, and I must have everything on board shipshape, and as clean, Travers, as if she were a seventy-four. If there's the head of a pail visible, it must be as bright as silver. And everything must be at the word. The least hesitation, and I have done with that man.

If Davy here had grumbled one mouthful, even on his way overboard, I wouldn't have kept him."

He then arranged that Travers was to go home that night, and bring with him the next morning an old carpenter friend of his. He would himself be down by seven o'clock to set him to work.

The result was that, before a fortnight was over, he had the cabin thoroughly fitted up, with all the luxuries it had formerly possessed, and as many more as he could think of--to compensate for the loss of the s.p.a.ce occupied by the daintiest little stateroom --a very jewel box for softness and richness and comfort. In the cabin, amongst the rest of his additions, he had fixed in a corner a set of tiny bookshelves, and filled them with what books he knew his sister liked, and some that he liked for her. It was not probable she would read in them much, he said to himself, but they wouldn't make the boat heel, and who could tell when a drop of celestial nepenthe might ooze from one or another of them! So there they stood, in their lovely colours, of morocco, russia, calf or vellum --types of the infinite rest in the midst of the ever restless-- the types for ever tossed, but the rest remaining.

By that time also he had arranged with Travers and Davy a code of signals.

The day after Malcolm had his new hack, he rode him behind his mistress in the park, and nothing could be more decorous than the behaviour of both horse and groom. It was early, and in Rotten Row, to his delight, they met the lady of rebuke. She and Florimel pulled up simultaneously, greeted, and had a little talk. When they parted, and the lady came to pa.s.s Malcolm, whom she had not suspected, sitting a civilised horse in all serenity behind his mistress, she cast a quick second glance at him, and her fair face flushed with the red reflex of yesterday's anger. He expected her to turn at once and complain of him to her mistress, but to his disappointment, she rode on.

When they left the park, Florimel went down Const.i.tution Hill, and turning westward, rode to Chelsea. As they approached Mr Lenorme's house, she stopped and said to Malcolm--"I am going to run in and thank Mr Lenorme for the trouble he has been at about the horse.

Which is the house?"

She pulled up at the gate. Malcolm dismounted, but before he could get near to a.s.sist her, she was already halfway up the walk-- flying, and he was but in time to catch the rein of Abbot, already moving off curious to know whether he was actually trusted alone.

In about five minutes she came again, glancing about her all ways but behind, with a scared look, Malcolm thought. But she walked more slowly and statelily than usual down the path. In a moment Malcolm had her in the saddle, and she cantered away--past the hospital into Sloane Street, and across the park home. He said to himself, "She knows the way."

CHAPTER XXVI: THE SCHOOLMASTER

Alexander Graham, the schoolmaster, was the son of a grieve, or farm overseer, in the North of Scotland. By straining every nerve, his parents had succeeded in giving him a university education, the narrowness of whose scope was possibly favourable to the development of what genius, rare and shy, might lurk among the students. He had laboured well, and had gathered a good deal from books and lectures, but far more from the mines they guided him to discover in his own nature. In common with so many Scotch parents, his had cherished the most wretched as well as hopeless of all ambitions, seeing it presumes to work in a region into which no ambition can enter--I mean that of seeing their son a clergyman.

In presbyter, curate, bishop, or cardinal, ambition can fare but as that of the creeping thing to build its nest in the topmost boughs of the cedar. Worse than that; my simile is a poor one; for the moment a thought of ambition is cherished, that moment the man is out of the kingdom. Their son with already a few glimmering insights, which had not yet begun to interfere with his acceptance of the doctrines of his church, made no opposition to their wish, but having qualified himself to the satisfaction of his superiors, at length ascended the pulpit to preach his first sermon.

The custom of the time as to preaching was a sort of compromise between reading a sermon and speaking extempore, a mode morally as well as artistically false: the preacher learned his sermon by rote, and repeated it--as much like the man he therein was not, and as little like the parrot he was, as he could. It is no wonder, in such an attempt, either that memory should fail a shy man, or a.s.surance an honest man. In Mr Graham's case it was probably the former: the practice was universal, and he could hardly yet have begun to question it, so as to have had any conscience of evil.

Blessedly, however, for his dawning truth and well being, he failed --failed utterly--pitifully. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; his lips moved, but shaped no sound; a deathly dew bathed his forehead; his knees shook; and he sank at last to the bottom of the chamber of his torture, whence, while his mother wept below, and his father clenched hands of despair beneath the tails of his Sunday coat, he was half led, half dragged down the steps by the bedral, shrunken together like one caught in a shameful deed, and with the ghastly look of him who has but just revived from the faint supervening on the agonies of the rack. Home they crept together, speechless and hopeless all three, to be thenceforth the contempt and not the envy of their fellow parishioners. For if the vulgar feeling towards the home born prophet is superciliousness, what must the sentence upon failure be in ungenerous natures, to which every downfall of another is an uplifting of themselves! But Mr Graham's worth had gained him friends in the presbytery, and he was that same week appointed to the vacant school of another parish.

There it was not long before he made the acquaintance of Griselda Campbell, who was governess in the great house of the neighbourhood, and a love, not the less fine that it was hopeless from the first, soon began to consume the chagrin of his failure, and subst.i.tute for it a more elevating sorrow;--for how could an embodied failure, to offer whose miserable self would be an insult, dare speak of love to one before whom his whole being sank worshipping. Silence was the sole armour of his privilege. So long as he was silent, the terrible arrow would never part from the bow of those sweet lips; he might love on, love ever, nor be grudged the bliss of such visions as to him, seated on its outer steps, might come from any chance opening of the heavenly gate. And Miss Campbell thought of him more kindly than he knew. But before long she accepted the offered situation of governess to Lady Annabel, the only child of the late marquis's elder brother, at that time himself marquis, and removed to Lossie House. There the late marquis fell in love with her, and persuaded her to a secret marriage. There also she became, in the absence of her husband, the mother of Malcolm. But the marquis of the time, jealous for the succession of his daughter, and fearing his brother might yet marry the mother of his child, contrived, with the a.s.sistance of the midwife, to remove the infant and persuade the mother that he was dead, and also to persuade his brother of the death of both mother and child; after which, imagining herself wilfully deserted by her husband, yet determined to endure shame rather than break the promise of secrecy she had given him, the poor lady accepted the hospitality of her distant relative, Miss Horn, and continued with her till she died.

When he learned where she had gone, Mr Graham seized a chance of change to Portlossie that occurred soon after, and when she became her cousin's guest, went to see her, was kindly received, and for twenty years lived in friendly relations with the two. It was not until after her death that he came to know the strange fact that the object of his calm unalterable devotion had been a wife all those years, and was the mother of his favourite pupil. About the same time he was dismissed from the school on the charge of heretical teaching, founded on certain religious conversations he had had with some of the fisher people who sought his advice; and thereupon he had left the place, and gone to London, knowing it would be next to impossible to find or gather another school in Scotland after being thus branded. In London he hoped, one way or another, to avoid dying of cold or hunger, or in debt: that was very nearly the limit of his earthly ambition.

He had just one acquaintance in the whole mighty city, and no more.

Him he had known in the days of his sojourn at King's College, where he had grown with him from bejan to magistrand. He was the son of a linen draper in Aberdeen, and was a decent, good humoured fellow, who, if he had not distinguished, had never disgraced himself. His father, having somewhat influential business relations, and finding in him no leanings to a profession, bespoke the good offices of a certain large retail house in London, and sent him thither to learn the business. The result was that he had married a daughter of one of the partners, and become a partner himself. His old friend wrote to him at his shop in Oxford Street, and then went to see him at his house in Haverstock Hill.

He was shown into the library--in which were two mahogany cases with plate gla.s.s doors, full of books, well cared for as to clothing and condition, and perfectly placid, as if never disturbed from one week's end to another. In a minute Mr Marshal entered--so changed that he could never have recognized him--still, however, a kind hearted, genial man. He received his cla.s.sfellow cordially and respectfully--referred merrily to old times, and begged to know how he was getting on, asked whether he had come to London with any special object, and invited him to dine with them on Sunday.

He accepted the invitation, met him, according to agreement, at a certain chapel in Kentish Town, of which he was a deacon, and walked home with him and his wife.

They had but one of their family at home--the youngest son, whom his father was having educated for the dissenting ministry, in the full conviction that he was doing not a little for the truth, and justifying its cause before men, by devoting to its service the son of a man of standing and worldly means, whom he might have easily placed in a position to make money. The youth was of simple character and good inclination--ready to do what he saw to be right, but slow in putting to the question anything that interfered with his notions of laudable ambition, or justifiable self interest. He was attending lectures at a dissenting college in the neighbourhood, for his father feared Oxford or Cambridge, not for his morals, but his opinions in regard to church and state.

The schoolmaster spent a few days in the house. His friend was generally in town, and his wife, regarding him as very primitive and hardly fit for what she counted society--the cla.s.s, namely, that she herself represented, was patronising and condescending; but the young fellow, finding, to his surprise, that he knew a great deal more about his studies than he did himself, was first somewhat attracted and then somewhat influenced by him, so that at length an intimacy tending to friendship arose between them.

Mr Graham was not a little shocked to discover that his ideas in respect of the preacher's calling were of a very worldly kind.

The notions of this fledgling of dissent differed from those of a clergyman of the same stamp in this:--the latter regards the church as a society with acc.u.mulated property for the use of its officers; the former regarded it as a community of communities, each possessing a preaching house which ought to be made commercially successful. Saving influences must emanate from it of course-- but dissenting saving influences.

His mother was a partisan to a hideous extent. To hear her talk you would have thought she imagined the apostles the first dissenters, and that the main duty of every Christian soul was to battle for the victory of Congregationalism over Episcopacy, and Voluntaryism over State Endowment. Her every mode of thinking and acting was of a levelling commonplace. With her, love was liking, duty something unpleasant--generally to other people, and kindness patronage. But she was just in money matters, and her son too had every intention of being worthy of his hire, though wherein lay the value of the labour with which he thought to counterpoise that hire, it were hard to say.

CHAPTER XXVII: THE PREACHER

The sermon Mr Graham heard at the chapel that Sunday morning in Kentish Town was not of an elevating, therefore not of a strengthening description. The pulpit was at that time in offer to the highest bidder--in orthodoxy, that is, combined with popular talent.

The first object of the chapel's existence--I do not say in the minds of those who built it, for it was an old place, but certainly in the minds of those who now directed its affairs--was not to save its present congregation, but to gather a larger--ultimately that they might be saved, let us hope, but primarily that the drain upon the purses of those who were responsible for its rent and other outlays, might be lessened. Mr Masquar, therefore, to whom the post was a desirable one, had been mainly anxious that morning to prove his orthodoxy, and so commend his services. Not that in those days one heard so much of the dangers of heterodoxy: that monster was as yet but growling far off in the jungles of Germany; but certain whispers had been abroad concerning the preacher which he thought desirable to hush, especially as they were founded in truth. He had tested the power of heterodoxy to attract attention, but having found that the attention it did attract was not of a kind favourable to his wishes, had so skilfully remodelled his theories that, although to his former friends he declared them in substance unaltered, it was impossible any longer to distinguish them from the most uncompromising orthodoxy; and his sermon of that morning had tended neither to the love of G.o.d, the love of man, nor a hungering after righteousness--its aim being to disprove the reported heterodoxy of Jacob Masquar.

As they walked home, Mrs Marshal, addressing her husband in a tone of conjugal disapproval, said, with more force than delicacy,

"The pulpit is not the place to give a man to wash his dirty linen in."

"Well, you see, my love," answered her husband in a tone of apology, "people won't submit to be told their duty by mere students, and just at present there seems n.o.body else to be had. There's none in the market but old stagers and young colts--eh, Fred? But Mr Masquar is at least a man of experience."

"Of more than enough, perhaps," suggested his wife. "And the young ones must have their chance, else how are they to learn? You should have given the princ.i.p.al a hint. It is a most desirable thing that Frederick should preach a little oftener."

"They have it in turn, and it wouldn't do to favour one more than another."

"He could hand his guinea, or whatever they gave him, to the one whose turn it ought to have been, and that would set it all right."

At this point the silk mercer, fearing that the dominie, as he called him, was silently disapproving, and willing therefore to change the subject, turned to him and said,

"Why shouldn't you give us a sermon, Graham?"

The schoolmaster laughed.

"Did you never hear," he said, "how I fell like Dagon on the threshold of the church, and have lain there ever since."

"What has that to do with it?" returned his friend, sorry that his forgetfulness should have caused a painful recollection. "That is ages ago, when you were little more than a boy. Seriously," he added, chiefly to cover his little indiscretion, "will you preach for us the Sunday after next?"

Deacons generally ask a man to preach for them.

"No," said Mr Graham.

But even as he said it, a something began to move in his heart-- a something half of jealousy for G.o.d, half of pity for poor souls buffeted by such winds as had that morning been roaring, chaff laden, about the church, while the grain fell all to the bottom of the pulpit. Something burned in him: was it the word that was as a fire in his bones, or was it a mere l.u.s.t of talk? He thought for a moment.

"Have you any gatherings between Sundays?" he asked.

"Yes; every Wednesday evening," replied Mr Marshal. "And if you won't preach on Sunday, we shall announce tonight that next Wednesday a clergyman of the Church of Scotland will address the prayer meeting."

He was glad to get out of it so, for he was uneasy about his friend, both as to his nerve, which might fail him, and his Scotch oddities, which would not.

"That would be hardly true," said Mr Graham, "seeing I never got beyond a licence."

"n.o.body here knows the difference between a licentiate and a placed minister; and if they did they would not care a straw. So we'll just say clergyman."

"But I won't have it announced in any terms. Leave that alone, and I will try to speak at the prayer meeting."

"It won't be in the least worth your while except we announce it.

You won't have a soul to hear you but the pew openers, the woman that cleans the chapel, Mrs Marshal's washerwoman, and the old greengrocer we buy our vegetables from. We must really announce it."