Going back to the house, she met Florimel, and turned again with her to the scene of discipline. Ere they reached it, Florimel's delight with all around her had done something to restore Clementina's composure: the place was precious to her, for there she had passed nearly the whole of her childhood. But to anyone with a heart open to the expressions of Nature's countenance, the place could not but have a strange as well as peculiar charm.
Florimel had lost her way. I would rather it had been in the moonlight, but slant sunlight was next best. It shone through a slender multitude of mast-like stems, whose shadows complicated the wonder, while the light seemed amongst them to have gathered to itself properties appreciable by other organs besides the eyes, and to dwell bodily with the trees. The soil was mainly of sand, the soil to delight the long tap roots of the fir trees, covered above with a thick layer of slow forming mould, in the gradual odoriferous decay of needles and cones and flakes of bark and knots of resinous exudation. It grew looser and sandier, and its upper coat thinner, as she approached the shore. The trees shrunk in size, stood farther apart, and grew more individual, sending out knarled boughs on all sides of them, and asserting themselves as the tall slender branchless ones in the social restraint of the thicker wood dared not do. They thinned and thinned, and the sea and the shore came shining through, for the ground sloped to the beach without any intervening abruption of cliff or even bank; they thinned and thinned until all were gone, and the bare long yellow sands lay stretched out on both sides for miles, gleaming and sparkling in the sun, especially at one spot where the water of a little stream wandered about over them, as if it had at length found its home, but was too weary to enter and lose its weariness, and must wait for the tide to come up and take it. But when Florimel reached the strand, she could see nothing of the group she sought: the shore took a little bend, and a tongue of forest came in between.
She was on her way back to the house when she met Clementina, also returning discomfited. Pleased as she was with them, her hostess soon interrupted her ecstasies by breaking out in accusation of Malcolm, not untempered, however, with a touch of dawning respect. At the same time her report of his words was anything but accurate, for as no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding. But they had not time to discuss him now, as Clementina insisted on Florimel's putting an immediate stop to his cruelty.
When they reached the spot, there was the groom again seated on his animal's head, with a new proposition in the sand before him.
"Malcolm," said his mistress, "let the mare get up. You must let her off the rest of her punishment this time."
Malcolm rose again to his knee.
"Yes, my lady," he said. "But perhaps your ladyship wouldn't mind helping me to unbuckle her girths before she gets to her feet. I want to give her a bath – Come to this side," he went on, as Florimel advanced to his request, "– round here by her head. If your ladyship would kneel upon it, that would be best. But you mustn't move till I tell you."
"I will do anything you bid me – exactly as you say, Malcolm," responded Florimel.
"There's the Colonsay blood! I can trust that!" cried Malcolm, with a pardonable outbreak of pride in his family. Whether most of his ancestors could so well have appreciated the courage of obedience, is not very doubtful.
Clementina was shocked at the insolent familiarity of her poor little friend's groom, but Florimel saw none, and kneeled, as if she had been in church, on the head of the mare, with the fierce crater of her fiery brain blazing at her knee. Then Malcolm lifted the flap of the saddle, undid the buckles of the girths, and drawing them a little from under her, laid the saddle on the sand, talking all the time to Florimel, lest a sudden word might seem a direction, and she should rise before the right moment had come.
"Please, my lady Clementina, will you go to the edge of the wood. I can't tell what she may do when she gets up. And please, my lady Florimel, will you run there too, the moment you get off her head."
When he got her rid of the saddle, he gathered the reins together in his bridle hand, took his whip in the other, and softly and carefully straddled across her huge barrel without touching her.
"Now, my lady!" he said. "Run for the wood."
Florimel rose and fled, heard a great scrambling behind her, and turning at the first tree, which was only a few yards off, saw Kelpie on her hind legs, and Malcolm, whom she had lifted with her, sticking by his knees on her bare back. The moment her fore feet touched the ground, he gave her the spur severely, and after one plunging kick, off they went westward over the sands, away from the sun; nor did they turn before they had dwindled to such a speck that the ladies could not have told by their eyes whether it was moving or not. At length they saw it swerve a little; by and by it began to grow larger; and after another moment or two they could distinguish what it was, tearing along towards them like a whirlwind, the lumps of wet sand flying behind like an upward storm of clods. What a picture it was only neither of the ladies was calm enough to see it picturewise: the still sea before, type of the infinite always, and now of its repose; the still straight solemn wood behind, like a past world that had gone to sleep – out of which the sand seemed to come flowing down, to settle in the long sand lake of the beach; that flameless furnace of life tearing along the shore, betwixt the sea and the land, between time and eternity, guided, but only half controlled, by the strength of a higher will; and the two angels that had issued – whether out of the forest of the past or the sea of the future, who could tell? – and now stood, with hand shaded eyes, gazing upon that fierce apparition of terrene life.
As he came in front of them, Malcolm suddenly wheeled Kelpie, so suddenly and in so sharp a curve that he made her "turne close to the ground, like a cat, when scratchingly she wheeles about after a mouse," as Sir Philip Sidney says, and dashed her straight into the sea. The two ladies gave a cry, Florimel of delight, Clementina of dismay, for she knew the coast, and that there it shelved suddenly into deep water. But that was only the better to Malcolm: it was the deep water he sought, though he got it with a little pitch sooner than he expected. He had often ridden Kelpie into the sea at Portlossie, even in the cold autumn weather when first she came into his charge, and nothing pleased her better or quieted her more. He was a heavy weight to swim with, but she displaced much water. She carried her head bravely, he balanced sideways, and they swam splendidly. To the eyes of Clementina the mare seemed to be labouring for her life.
When Malcolm thought she had had enough of it, he turned her head to the shore. But then came the difficulty. So steeply did the shore shelve that Kelpie could not get a hold with her hind hoofs to scramble up into the shallow water. The ladies saw the struggle, and Clementina, understanding it, was running in an agony right into the water, with the vain idea of helping them, when Malcolm threw himself off, drawing the reins over Kelpie's head as he fell, and swimming but the length of them shorewards, felt the ground with his feet, and stood, Kelpie, relieved of his weight, floated a little farther on to the shelf, got a better hold with her fore feet, some hold with her hind ones, and was beside him in a moment. The same moment Malcolm was on her back again, and they were tearing off eastward at full stretch. So far did the lessening point recede in the narrowing distance, that the two ladies sat down on the sand, and fell a-talking about Florimel's most uncategorical groom, as Clementina, herself the most uncategorical of women, to use her own scarcely justifiable epithet, called him. She asked if such persons abounded in Scotland. Florimel could but answer that this was the only one she had met with. Then she told her about Richmond Park and Lord Liftore and Epictetus.
"Ah, that accounts for him!" said Clementina. "Epictetus was a Cynic, a very cruel man: he broke his slave's leg once, I remember."
"Mr Lenorme told me that he was the slave, and that his master broke his leg," said Florimel.
"Ah, yes! I daresay. – That was it. But it is of little consequence: his principles were severe, and your groom has been his too ready pupil. It is a pity he is such a savage: he might be quite an interesting character. – Can he read?"
"I have just told you of his reading Greek over Kelpie's head," said Florimel, laughing.
"Ah! but I meant English," said Clementina, whose thoughts were a little astray. Then laughing at herself she explained "I mean, can he read aloud? I put the last of the Waverley novels in the box we shall have tomorrow, or the next day at latest, I hope: and I was wondering whether he could read the Scotch – as it ought to be read. I have never heard it spoken, and I don't know how to imagine it."
"We can try him," said Florimel. "It will be great fun anyhow. He is such a character! You will be so amused with the remarks he will make!"
"But can you venture to let him talk to you?"
"If you ask him to read, how will you prevent him? Unfortunately he has thoughts, and they will out."
"Is there no danger of his being rude?"
"If speaking his mind about anything in the book be rudeness, he will most likely be rude. Any other kind of rudeness is as impossible to Malcolm as to any gentleman in the land."
"How can you be so sure of him?" said Clementina, a little anxious as to the way in which her friend regarded the young man.
"My father was – yes, I may say so – attached to him – so much so that he – I can't quite say what – but something like made him promise never to leave my service. And this I know for myself, that not once, ever since that man came to us, has he done a selfish thing or one to be ashamed of. I could give you proof after proof of his devotion."
Florimel's warmth did not reassure Clementina; and her uneasiness wrought to the prejudice of Malcolm. She was never quite so generous towards human beings as towards animals. She could not be depended on for justice except to people in trouble, and then she was very apt to be unjust to those who troubled them.
"I would not have you place too much confidence in your Admirable Crichton of menials, Florimel," she said. "There is something about him I cannot get at the bottom of. Depend upon it, a man who can be cruel would betray on the least provocation."
Florimel smiled superior – as she had good reason to do; but Clementina did not understand the smile, and therefore did not like it. She feared the young fellow had already gained too much influence over his mistress.
"Florimel, my love," she said, "listen to me. Your experience is not so ripe as mine. That man is not what you think him. One day or other he will, I fear, make himself worse than disagreeable. How can a cruel man be unselfish?"
"I don't think him cruel at all. But then I haven't such a soft heart for animals as you. We should think it silly in Scotland. You wouldn't teach a dog manners at the expense of a howl. You would let him be a nuisance rather than give him a cut with a whip. What a nice mother of children you will make, Clementina! That's how the children of good people are so often a disgrace to them."
"You are like all the rest of the Scotch I ever knew," said Lady Clementina: "the Scotch are always preaching! I believe it is in their blood. You are a nation of parsons. Thank goodness! my morals go no farther than doing as I would be done by. I want to see creatures happy about me. For my own sake even, I would never cause pang to person – it gives me such a pang myself."
"That's the way you are made, I suppose, Clementina," returned Florimel. "For me, my clay must be coarser. I don't mind a little pain myself, and I can't break my heart for it when I see it – except it be very bad – such as I should care about myself – But here comes the tyrant."
Malcolm was pulling up his mare some hundred yards off. Even now she was unwilling to stop – but it was at last only from pure original objection to whatever was wanted of her. When she did stand she stood stock still, breathing hard.
"I have actually succeeded in taking a little out of her at last, my lady," said Malcolm as he dismounted. "Have you got a bit of sugar in your pocket, my lady? She would take it quite gently now."
Florimel had none, but Clementina had, for she always carried sugar for her horse. Malcolm held the demoness very watchfully, but she took the sugar from Florimel's palm as neatly as an elephant, and let her stroke her nose over her wide red nostrils without showing the least of her usual inclination to punish a liberty with death. Then Malcolm rode her home, and she was at peace till the evening – when he took her out again.
CHAPTER XL: MOONLIGHT
And now followed a pleasant time. Wastbeach was the quietest of all quiet neighbourhoods; it was the loveliest of spring summer weather; and the variety of scenery on moor, in woodland, and on coast, within easy reach of such good horsewomen, was wonderful. The first day they rested the horses that would rest, but the next day were in the saddle immediately after an early breakfast. They took the forest way. In many directions were tolerably smooth rides cut, and along them they had good gallops, to the great delight of Florimel after the restraints of Rotten Row, where riding had seemed like dancing a minuet with a waltz in her heart. Malcolm, so far as human companionship went, found it dull, for Lady Clementina's groom regarded him with the contempt of superior age, the most contemptible contempt of all, seeing years are not the wisdom they ought to bring, and the first sign of that is modesty. Again and again his remarks tempted Malcolm to incite him to ride Kelpie, but conscience, the thought of the man's family, and the remembrance that it required all his youthful strength, and that it would therefore be the challenge of the strong to the weak, saved him from the sin, and he schooled himself to the endurance of middle aged arrogance. For the learning of the lesson he had practice enough: they rode every day, and Griffith did not thaw; but the one thundering gallop he had every morning along the sands with Kelpie, whom1 no ordinary day's work was enough to save from the heart burning ferment of repressed activity, was both preparation and amends for the annoyance.
When his mistress mentioned the proposal of her friend with regard to the new novel, he at once expressed his willingness to attempt compliance, fearing only, he said, that his English would prove offensive and his Scotch unintelligible. The task was nowise alarming to him, for he had read aloud much to the schoolmaster, who had also insisted that he should read aloud when alone, especially verse, in order that he might get all the good of its outside as well as inside – its sound as well as thought, the one being the ethereal body of the other. And he had the best primary qualifications for the art, namely, a delight in the sounds of human speech, a value for the true embodiment of thought, and a good ear, mental as well as vocal, for the assimilation of sound to sense. After these came the quite secondary, yet valuable gift of a pleasant voice, manageable for reflection; and with such an outfit, the peculiarities of his country's utterance, the long drawn vowels, and the outbreak of feeling in chant-like tones and modulations, might be forgiven, and certainly were forgiven by Lady Clementina, who, even in his presence, took his part against the objections of his mistress. On the whole, they were so much pleased with his first reading, which took place the very day the box arrived, that they concluded to restrain the curiosity of their interest in persons and events, for the sake of the pleasure of meeting them always in the final fulness of local colour afforded them by his utterance. While he read, they busied their fingers with their embroidery; for as yet that graceful work, so lovelily described by Cowper in his Task, had not begun to vanish before the crude colours and mechanical vulgarity of Berlin wool, now happily in its turn vanishing like a dry dust cloud into the limbo of the art universe:
The well depicted flower,
Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn
Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs,
And curling tendrils, gracefully disposed,
Follow the nimble finger of the fair;
A wreath, that cannot fade, of flowers that blow
With most success when all besides decay.2
There was not much of a garden about the place, but there was a little lawn amongst the pines, in the midst of which stood a huge old patriarch, with red stem and grotesquely contorted branches: beneath it was a bench, and there, after their return from their two hours' ride, the ladies sat, while the sun was at its warmest, on the mornings of their first and second readings: Malcolm sat on a wheelbarrow. After lunch on the second day, which they had agreed from the first, as ladies so often do, when free of the more devouring sex, should be their dinner, and after due visits paid to a multitude of animals, the desire awoke simultaneously in them for another portion of "St. Ronan's Well." They resolved therefore to send for their reader as soon as they had had tea. But when they sent he was nowhere to be found, and they concluded on a stroll.
Anticipating no further requirement of his service that day, Malcolm had gone out. Drawn by the sea, he took his way through the dim solemn boughless wood, as if to keep a moonlight tryst with his early love. But the sun was not yet down, and among the dark trees, shot through by the level radiance, he wandered, his heart swelling in his bosom with the glory and the mystery. Again the sun was in the wood, its burning centre, the marvel of the home which he left in the morning only to return thither at night, and it was now a temple of red light, more gorgeous, more dream woven than the morning. How he glowed on the red stems of the bare pines, fit pillars for that which seemed temple and rite, organ and anthem in one – the worship of the earth, uplifted to its Hyperion! It was a world of faery; anything might happen in it. Who, in that region of marvel, would start to see suddenly a knight on a great sober warhorse come slowly pacing down the torrent of carmine splendour, flashing it, like the Knight of the Sun himself in a flood from every hollow, a gleam from every flat, and a star from every round and knob of his armour? As the trees thinned away, and his feet sank deeper in the looser sand, and the sea broke blue out of the infinite, talking quietly to itself of its own solemn swell into being out of the infinite thought unseen, Malcolm felt as if the world with its loveliness and splendour were sinking behind him, and the cool entrancing sweetness of the eternal dreamland of the soul, where the dreams are more real than any sights of the world, were opening wide before his entering feet.
"Shall not death be like this?" he said, and threw himself upon the sand, and hid his face and his eyes from it all. For there is this strange thing about all glory embodied in the material, that, when the passion of it rises to its height, we hurry from its presence that its idea may perfect itself in silent and dark and deaf delight. Of its material self we want no more: its real self we have, and it sits at the fountain of our tears. Malcolm hid his face from the source of his gladness, and worshipped the source of that source.
Rare as they are at any given time, there have been, I think, such youths in all ages of the world – youths capable of glorying in the fountain whence issues the torrent of their youthful might. Nor is the reality of their early worship blasted for us by any mistral of doubt that may blow upon their spirit from the icy region of the understanding. The cold fevers, the vital agues that such winds breed, can but prove that not yet has the sun of the perfect arisen upon them; that the Eternal has not yet manifested himself in all regions of their being; that a grander, more obedient, therefore more blissful, more absorbing worship yet, is possible, nay, is essential to them. These chills are but the shivers of the divine nature, unsatisfied, half starved, banished from its home, divided from its origin, after which it calls in groanings it knows not how to shape into sounds articulate. They are the spirit wail of the holy infant after the bosom of its mother. Let no man long back to the bliss of his youth – but forward to a bliss that shall swallow even that, and contain it, and be more than it. Our history moves in cycles, it is true, ever returning toward the point whence it started; but it is in the imperfect circles of a spiral it moves; it returns – but ever to a point above the former: even the second childhood, at which the fool jeers, is the better, the truer, the fuller childhood, growing strong to cast off altogether, with the husk of its own enveloping age, that of its family, its country, its world as well. Age is not all decay: it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
When Malcolm lifted his head, the sun had gone down. He rose and wandered along the sand towards the moon – at length blooming out of the darkening sky, where she had hung all day like a washed out rag of light, to revive as the sunlight faded. He watched the banished life of her day swoon returning, until, gathering courage, she that had been no one, shone out fair and clear, in conscious queendom of the night. Then, in the friendly infolding of her dreamlight and the dreamland it created, Malcolm's soul revived as in the comfort of the lesser, the mitigated glory, and, as the moon into radiance from the darkened air, and the nightingale into music from the sleep stilled world of birds, blossomed from the speechlessness of thought and feeling into a strange kind of brooding song. If the words were half nonsense, the feeling was not the less real. Such as they were, they came almost of themselves, and the tune came with them.
Rose o' my hert,
Open yer leaves to the lampin' mune;
Into the curls lat her keek an' dert;
She'll tak' the colour but gi'e ye tune.
Buik o' my brain,
Open yer neuks to the starry signs;
Lat the een o' the holy luik an' strain
An' glimmer an' score atween the lines.
Cup o' my sowl,
Gowd an' diamond an' ruby cup,
Ye're noucht ava but a toom dry bowl,
Till the wine o' the kingdom fill ye up,
Conscience glass,
Mirror the infinite all in thee;
Melt the bounded and make it pass
Into the tideless, shoreless sea.
World of my life,
Swing thee round thy sunny track;
Fire and wind and water and strife –
Carry them all to the glory back.
Ever as he halted for a word, the moonlight, and the low sweet waves on the sands, filled up the pauses to his ear; and there he lay, looking up to the sky and the moon and the rose diamond stars, his thoughts half dissolved in feeling, and his feeling half crystallised to thought.
Out of the dim wood came two lovely forms into the moonlight, and softly approached him – so softly that he knew nothing of their nearness until Florimel spoke.
"Is that MacPhail?" she said.
"Yes, my lady," answered Malcolm, and bounded to his feet
"What were you singing?"
"You could hardly call it singing, my lady. We should call it crooning in Scotland."
"Croon it again then."
"I couldn't, my lady. It's gone."
"You don't mean to pretend that you were extemporising?"
"I was crooning what came – like the birds, my lady. I couldn't have done it if I had thought anyone was near."
Then, half ashamed, and anxious to turn the talk from the threshold of his secret chamber, he said, "Did you ever see a lovelier night, ladies?"
"Not often, certainly," answered Clementina.
She was not quite pleased and not altogether offended at his addressing them dually. A curious sense of impropriety in the state of things bewildered her – she and her friend talking thus, in the moonlight, on the seashore, doing nothing, with her friend's groom – and such a groom, his mistress asking him to sing again, and he addressing them both with a remark on the beauty of the night! She had braved the world a good deal, but she did not choose to brave it where nothing was to be had, and she was too honest to say to herself that the world would never know – that there was nothing to brave: she was not one to do that in secret to which she would not hold her face. Yet all the time she had a doubt whether this young man, whom it would certainly be improper to encourage by addressing from any level but one of lofty superiority, did not belong to a higher sphere than theirs; while certainly no man could be more unpresuming, or less forward even when opposing his opinion to theirs. Still – if an angel were to come down and take charge of their horses, would ladies be justified in treating him as other than a servant?
"This is just the sort of night," Malcolm resumed, "when I could almost persuade myself I was not quite sure I wasn't dreaming. It makes a kind of border land betwixt waking and sleeping, knowing and dreaming, in our brain. In a night like this I fancy we feel something like the colour of what God feels when he is making the lovely chaos of a new world, a new kind of world, such as has never been before."
"I think we had better go in," said Clementina to Florimel, and turned away.
Florimel made no objection, and they walked towards the wood.
"You really must get rid of him as soon as you can," said Clementina, when again the moonless night of the pines had received them: "he is certainly more than half a lunatic. It is almost full moon now," she added, looking up. "I have never seen him so bad."
Florimel's clear laugh rang through the wood.
"Don't be alarmed, Clementina," she said. "He has talked like that ever since I knew him; and if he is mad, at least he is no worse than he has always been. It is nothing but poetry – yeast on the brain, my father used to say. We should have a fish poet of him – a new thing in the world, he said. He would never be cured till he broke out in a book of poetry. I should be afraid my father would break the catechism and not rest in his grave till the resurrection, if I were to send Malcolm away."
For Malcolm, he was at first not a little mazed at the utter blankness of the wall against which his words had dashed themselves. Then he smiled queerly to himself, and said:
"I used to think ilka bonny lassie bude to be a poetess – for hoo sud she be bonnie but by the informin' hermony o' her bein'? – an' what's that but the poetry o' the Poet, the Makar, as they ca'd a poet i' the auld Scots tongue? – but haith! I ken better an' waur noo! There's gane the twa bonniest I ever saw, an' I s' lay my heid there's mair poetry in auld man faced Miss Horn nor in a dizzin like them. Ech! but it's some sair to bide. It's sair upon a man to see a bonny wuman 'at has nae poetry, nae inward lichtsome hermony in her. But it's dooms sairer yet to come upo' ane wantin' cowmon sense! Saw onybody ever sic a gran' sicht as my Leddy Clementina! – an' wha can say but she's weel named frae the hert oot? – as guid at the hert, I'll sweir, as at the een! but eh me! to hear the blether o' nonsense 'at comes oot atween thae twa bonny yetts o' music – an' a' cause she winna gi'e her hert rist an' time eneuch to grow bigger, but maun aye be settin' at things richt afore their time, an' her ain fitness for the job! It's sic a faithless kin' o' a w'y that! I could jist fancy I saw her gaein' a' roon' the trees o' a simmer nicht, pittin' hiney upo' the peers an' the peaches, 'cause she cudna lippen to natur' to ripe them sweet eneuch – only 'at she wad never tak the hiney frae the bees. She's jist the pictur' o' Natur' hersel' turnt some dementit. I cud jist fancy I saw her gaein' aboot amo' the ripe corn, on sic a nicht as this o' the mune, happin' 't frae the frost. An' I s' warran' no ae mesh in oor nets wad she lea' ohn clippit open gien the twine had a herrin' by the gills. She's e'en sae pitifu' owre the sinner 'at she winna gi'e him a chance o' growin' better. I won'er gien she believes 'at there's ae great thoucht abune a', an' aneth a', an' roon' a', an' in a'thing. She cudna be in sic a mist o' benevolence and parritch hertitness gien she cud lippen till a wiser. It's na'e won'er she kens naething aboot poetry but the meeserable sids an' sawdist an' leavin's the gran' leddies sing an' ca' sangs! Nae mair is 't ony won'er she sud tak' me for dementit, gien she h'ard what I was singin'! only I canna think she did that, for I was but croonin' till mysel'." – Malcolm was wrong there, for he was singing out loud and clear. – "That was but a kin' o' an unknown tongue atween Him an' me an' no anither."