The Marquis of Lossie Part 47

"We want no landloupin' knaves, old or young, about Lossie," he said. "If the place is no keepit dacent, we'll never get the young marchioness to come near's again."

"'Deed, factor," returned Meg, enhancing the force of her utterance by a composure marvellous from it's rarity, "the first thing to mak' the place--I'll no say dacent, sae lang there's sae mony claverin' wives in't, but mair dacent nor it has been for the last ten year, wad be to sen' factors back whaur they cam' frae."

"And whaur may that be?" asked Mr Crathie.

"That's mair nor I richtly can say," answered Meg Partan, "but auld farand fouk threepit it was somewhaur 'ithin the swing o' Sawtan's tail."

The reply on the factor's lips as he left the house, tended to justify the rude sarcasm.

CHAPTER LVI: MID OCEAN

There came a breath of something in the east. It was neither wind nor warmth. It was light before it is light to the eyes of men.

Slowly and slowly it grew, until, like the dawning soul in the face of one who lies in a faint, the life of light came back to the world, and at last the whole huge hollow hemisphere of rushing sea and cloud flecked sky lay like a great empty heart, waiting, in conscious glory of the light, for the central glory, the coming lord of day. And in the whole crystalline hollow, gleaming and flowing with delight, yet waiting for more, the Psyche was the only lonely life bearing thing--the one cloudy germ spot afloat in the bosom of the great roc egg of sea and sky, whose sheltering nest was the universe with its walls of flame.

Florimel woke, rose, went on deck, and for a moment was fresh born.

It was a forescent--even this could not be called a foretaste, of the kingdom of heaven; but Florimel never thought of the kingdom of heaven, the ideal of her own existence. She could however half appreciate this earthly outbreak of its glory, this incarnation of truth invisible. Round her, like a thousand doves, clamoured with greeting wings the joyous sea wind. Up came a thousand dancing billows, to shout their good morning. Like a petted animal, importunate for play, the breeze tossed her hair and dragged at her fluttering garments, then rushed in the Psyche's sails, swelled them yet deeper, and sent her dancing over the dancers. The sun peered up like a mother waking and looking out on her frolicking children.

Black shadows fell from sail to sail, slipping and shifting, and one long shadow of the Psyche herself shot over the world to the very gates of the west, but held her not, for she danced and leaned and flew as if she had but just begun her corantolavolta fresh with the morning, and had not been dancing all the livelong night over the same floor. Lively as any newborn b.u.t.terfly, not like a b.u.t.terfly's, flitting and hovering, was her flight, for still, like one that longed, she sped and strained and flew. The joy of bare life swelled in Florimel's bosom. She looked up, she looked around, she breathed deep. The cloudy anger that had rushed upon her like a watching tiger the moment she waked, fell back, and left her soul a clear minor to reflect G.o.d's dream of a world. She turned, and saw Malcolm at the tiller, and the cloudy wrath sprang upon her.

He stood composed and clear and cool as the morning, without sign of doubt or conscience of wrong, now peeping into the binnacle, now glancing at the sunny sails, where swayed across and back the dark shadows of the rigging, as the cutter leaned and rose, like a child running and staggering over the mult.i.tudinous and unstable hillocks. She turned from him.

"Good morning, my lady! What a good morning it is!" As in all his address to his mistress, the freedom of the words did not infect the tone; that was resonant of essential honour. "Strange to think,"

he went on, "that the sun himself there is only a great fire, and knows nothing about it! There must be a sun to that sun, or the whole thing is a vain show. There must be one to whom each is itself, yet the all makes a whole--one who is at once both centre and circ.u.mference to all."

Florimel cast on him a scornful look. For not merely was he talking his usual unintelligible rubbish of poetry, but he had the impertinence to speak as if he had done nothing amiss, and she had no ground for being offended with him. She made him no answer. A cloud came over Malcolm's face; and until she went again below, he gave his attention to his steering.

In the meantime Rose, who happily had turned out as good a sailor as her new mistress, had tidied the little cabin; and Florimel found, if not quite such a sumptuous breakfast laid as at Portland Place, yet a far better appet.i.te than usual to meet what there was; and when she had finished, her temper was better, and she was inclined to think less indignantly of Malcolm's share in causing her so great a pleasure. She was not yet quite spoiled. She was still such a lover of the visible world and of personal freedom, that the thought of returning to London and its leaden footed hours, would now have been unendurable. At this moment she could have imagined no better thing than thus to go tearing through the water--home to her home. For although she had spent little of her life at Lossie House, she could not but prefer it unspeakably to the schools in which she had pa.s.sed almost the whole of the preceding portion of it. There was little or nothing in the affair she could have wished otherwise except its origin. She was mischievous enough to enjoy even the thought of the consternation it would cause at Portland Place. She did not realize all its awkwardness. A letter to Lady Bellair when she reached home would, she said to herself, set everything right; and if Malcolm had now repented and put about, she would instantly have ordered him to hold on for Lossie. But it was mortifying that she should have come at the will of Malcolm, and not by her own--worse than mortifying that perhaps she would have to say so. If she were going to say so, she must turn him away as soon as she arrived. There was no help for it. She dared not keep him after that in the face of society. But she might take the bold, and perhaps a little dangerous measure of adopting the flight as altogether her own madcap idea. Her thoughts went floundering in the bog of expediency, until she was tired, and declined from thought to reverie.

Then dawning out of the dreamland of her past, appeared the image of Lenorme. Pure pleasure, glorious delight, such as she now felt, could not long possess her mind, without raising in its charmed circle the vision of the only man except her father whom she had ever--something like loved. Her behaviour to him had not yet roused in her shame or sorrow or sense of wrong. She had driven him from her; she was ashamed of her relation to him; she had caused him bitter suffering; she had all but promised to marry another man; yet she had not the slightest wish for that man's company there and then: with no one of her acquaintance but Lenorme could she have shared this conscious splendour of life.

"Would to G.o.d he had been born a gentleman instead of a painter!"

she said to herself when her imagination had brought him from the past, and set him in the midst of the present.

"Rank," she said, "I am above caring about. In that he might be ever so far my inferior, and welcome, if only he had been of a good family, a gentleman born!"

She was generosity, magnanimity itself in her own eyes! Yet he was of far better family than she knew, for she had never taken the trouble to inquire into his history. And now she was so much easier in her mind since she had so cruelly broken with him, that she felt positively virtuous because she had done it, and he was not at that moment by her side. And yet if he had that moment stepped from behind the mainsail, she would in all probability have thrown herself into his arms.

The day pa.s.sed on: Florimel grew tired and went to sleep; woke and had her dinner; took a volume of the "Arabian Nights," and read herself again to sleep; woke again; went on deck; saw the sun growing weary in the west. And still the unwearied wind blew, and still the Psyche danced on, as unwearied as the wind.

The sunset was rather an a.s.sumption than a decease, a reception of him out of their sight into an eternity of gold and crimson; and when he was gone, and the gorgeous bliss had withered into a dove hued grief, then the cool, soft twilight, thoughtful of the past and its love, crept out of the western caves over the breast of the water, and filled the dome and made of itself a great lens royal, through which the stars and their motions were visible; and the ghost of Aurora with both hands lifted her shroud above her head and made a dawn for the moon on the verge of the watery horizon-- a dawn as of the past, the hour of inverted hope.

Not a word all day had been uttered between Malcolm and his mistress: when the moon appeared, with the waves sweeping up against her face, he approached Florimel where she sat in the stern. Davy was steering.

"Will your ladyship come forward and see how the Psyche goes?"

he said. "At the stern, you can see only the pa.s.sive part of her motion. It is quite another thing to see the will of her at work in the bows."

At first she was going to refuse; but she changed her mind, or her mind changed her: she was not much more of a living and acting creature yet than the Psyche herself. She said nothing, but rose, and permitted Malcolm to help her forward.

It was the moon's turn now to be level with the water, and as Florimel stood on the larboard side, leaning over and gazing down, she saw her shine through the little feather of spray the cut.w.a.ter sent curling up before it, and turn it into pearls and semiopals.

"She's got a bone in her mouth, you see, my lady," said old Travers.

"Go aft till I call you, Travers," said Malcolm.

Rose was in Florimel's cabin, and they were now quite alone.

"My lady," said Malcolm, "I can't bear to have you angry with me."

"Then you ought not to deserve it," returned Florimel.

"My lady, if you knew all, you would not say I deserved it."

"Tell me all then, and let me judge."

"I cannot tell you all yet, but I will tell you something which may perhaps incline you to feel merciful. Did your ladyship ever think what could make me so much attached to your father?"

"No indeed. I never saw anything peculiar in it. Even nowadays there are servants to be found who love their masters. It seems to me natural enough. Besides he was very kind to you."

"It was natural indeed, my lady--more natural than you think.

Kind to me he was, and that was natural too."

"Natural to him, no doubt, for he was kind to everybody."

"My grandfather told you something of my early history--did he not, my lady?"

"Yes--at least I think I remember his doing so."

"Will you recall it, and see whether it suggests nothing?"

But Florimel could remember nothing in particular, she said. She had in truth, for as much as she was interested at the time, forgotten almost everything of the story.

"I really cannot think what you mean," she added. "If you are going to be mysterious, I shall resume my place by the tiller. Travers is deaf, and Davy is dumb: I prefer either."

"My lady," said Malcolm, "your father knew my mother, and persuaded her that he loved her."

Florimel drew herself up, and would have looked him to ashes if wrath could burn. Malcolm saw he must come to the point at once or the parley would cease.

"My lady," he said, "your father was my father too. I am a son of the Marquis of Lossie, and your brother--your ladyship's half brother, that is."

She looked a little stunned. The gleam died out of her eyes, and the glow out of her cheek. She turned and leaned over the bulwark.

He said no more, but stood watching her. She raised herself suddenly, looked at him, and said,

"Do I understand you?"

"I am your brother," Malcolm. repeated.

She made a step forward, and held out her hand. He took the little thing in his great grasp tenderly. Her lip trembled. She gazed at him for an instant, full in the face, with a womanly, believing expression.