The Marquis of Lossie Part 57

"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 G.o.d for it all his life, if he should never dream so again.

They walked across the gra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d'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 gra.s.s 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 fraica.s.s 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."