CHAPTER XX: BLUE PETER
By the time he had put up Kelpie, Malcolm found that his only chance of seeing Blue Peter before he left London, lay in going direct to the wharf. On his road he reflected on what had just passed, and was not altogether pleased with himself. He had nearly lost his temper with Liftore; and if he should act in any way unbefitting the position he had assumed, from the duties of which he was in no degree exonerated by the fact that he had assumed it for a purpose, it would not only be a failure in himself, but an impediment perhaps insurmountable in the path of his service. To attract attention was almost to insure frustration. When he reached the wharf he found they had nearly got her freight on board the smack. Blue Peter stood on the forecastle. He went to him and explained how it was that he had been unable to join him sooner.
"I didna ken ye," said Blue Peter, "in sic playactor kin' o' claes."
"Nobody in London would look at me twice now. But you remember how we were stared at when first we came," said Malcolm.
"Ow ay!" returned Peter with almost a groan; "there's a sair cheenge past upo' you, but I'm gauin' hame to the auld w'y o' things. The herrin' 'll be aye to the fore, I'm thinkin'; an' gien we getna a harbour we'll get a h'aven."
Judging it better to take no notice of this pretty strong expression of distrust and disappointment, Malcolm led him aside, and putting a few sovereigns in his hand, said,
"Here, Peter, that will take you home."
"It's ower muckle – a heap ower muckle. I'll tak naething frae ye but what'll pay my w'y."
"And what is such a trifle between friends?"
"There was a time, Ma'colm, whan what was mine was yours, an' what was yours was mine, but that time's gane."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Peter; but still I owe you as much as that for bare wages."
"There was no word o' wages when ye said, Peter, come to Lon'on wi' me. – Davie there – he maun hae his wauges."
"Weel," said Malcolm, thinking it better to give way, "I'm no abune bein' obleeged to ye, Peter. I maun bide my time, I see, for ye winna lippen till me. Eh man! your faith's sune at the wa'."
"Faith! what faith?" returned Peter, almost fiercely. "We're tauld to put no faith in man; an' gien I bena come to that yet freely, I'm nearer till't nor ever I was afore."
"Weel, Peter, a' 'at I can say is, I ken my ain hert, an' ye dinna ken't."
"Daur ye tell me!" cried Peter. "Disna the Scriptur' itsel' say the hert o' man is deceitfu' an' despratly wickit: who can know it?"
"Peter," said Malcolm, and he spoke very gently, for he understood that love and not hate was at the root of his friend's anger and injustice, "gien ye winna lippen to me, there's naething for't but I maun lippen to you. Gang hame to yer wife, an' gi'e her my compliments, an' tell her a' 'at's past atween you an' me, as near, word for word, as ye can tell the same; an' say till her, I pray her to judge atween you an' me – an' to mak the best o' me to ye 'at she can, for I wad ill thole to loss yer freenship, Peter."
The same moment came the command for all but passengers to go ashore. The men grasped each other's hand, looked each other in the eyes with something of mutual reproach, and parted – Blue Peter down the river to Scaurnose and Annie, Malcolm to the yacht lying still in the Upper Pool.
He saw it taken properly in charge, and arranged for having it towed up the river and anchored in the Chelsea Reach.
When Blue Peter found himself once more safe out at sea, with twelve hundred yards of canvas spread above him in one mighty wing betwixt boom and gaff; and the wind blowing half a gale, the weather inside him began to change a little. He began to see that he had not been behaving altogether as a friend ought. It was not that he saw reason for being better satisfied with Malcolm or his conduct, but reason for being worse satisfied with himself; and the consequence was that he grew still angrier with Malcolm, and the wrong he had done him seemed more and more an unpardonable one.
When he was at length seated on the top of the coach running betwixt Aberdeen and Fochabers, which would set him down as near Scaurnose as coach could go, he began to be doubtful how Annie, formally retained on Malcolm's side by the message he had to give her, would judge in the question between them; for what did she know of theatres and such places? And the doubt strengthened as he neared home. The consequence was that he felt in no haste to execute Malcolm's commission; and hence, the delights of greeting over, Annie was the first to open her bag of troubles: Mr Crathie had given them notice to quit at Midsummer.
"Jist what I micht hae expeckit!" cried Blue Peter, starting up. "Woe be to the man 'at puts his trust in princes! I luikit till him to save the fisher fowk, an' no to the Lord; an' the tooer o' Siloam 's fa'en upo' my heid: – what does he, the first thing, but turn his ain auld freen's oot o' the sma beild they had! That his father nor his gran'father, 'at was naither o' them God fearin' men, wad never hae put their han' till. Eh, wuman! but my hert's sair 'ithin me. To think o' Ma'colm MacPhail turnin' his back upo' them 'at's been freens wi' 'im sin ever he was a wee loonie, rinnin' aboot in coaties!"
"Hoot, man! what's gotten intill yer heid?" returned his wife. "It's no Ma'colm; it's the illwully factor. Bide ye till he comes till 's ain, an' Maister Crathie 'll hae to lauch o' the wrang side o' 's mou'."
But thereupon Peter began his tale of how he had fared in London, and in the excitement of keenly anticipated evil, and with his recollection of events wrapped in the mist of a displeasure which had deepened during his journey, he so clothed the facts of Malcolm's conduct in the garments of his own feelings that the mind of Annie Mair also became speedily possessed with the fancy that their friend's good fortune had upset his moral equilibrium, and that he had not only behaved to her husband with pride and arrogance, breaking all the ancient bonds of friendship between them, but had tried to seduce him from the ways of righteousness by inveigling him into a playhouse, where marvels of wickedness were going on at the very time. She wept a few bitter tears of disappointment, dried them hastily, lifted her head high, and proceeded to set her affairs in order as if death were at the door.
For indeed it was to them as a death to leave Scaurnose. True, Annie came from inland, and was not of the fisher race, but this part of the coast she had known from childhood, and in this cottage all her married years had been spent, while banishment of the sort involved banishment from every place they knew, for all the neighbourhood was equally under the power of the factor. And poor as their accommodation here was, they had plenty of open air and land room; whereas if they should be compelled to go to any of the larger ports, it would be to circumstances greatly inferior, and a neighbourhood in all probability very undesirable for their children.
CHAPTER XXI: MR GRAHAM
When Malcolm at length reached his lodging, he found there a letter from Miss Horn, containing the much desired information as to where the schoolmaster was to be found in the London wilderness. It was now getting rather late, and the dusk of a spring night had begun to gather; but little more than the breadth of the Regent's Park lay between him and his best friend – his only one in London – and he set out immediately for Camden Town.
The relation between him and his late schoolmaster was indeed of the strongest and closest. Long before Malcolm was born, and ever since, had Alexander Graham loved Malcolm's mother; but not until within the last few months had he learned that Malcolm was the son of Griselda Campbell. The discovery was to the schoolmaster like the bursting out of a known flower on an unknown plant. He knew then, not why he had loved the boy, for he loved every one of his pupils more or less, but why he had loved him with such a peculiar tone of affection.
It was a lovely evening. There had been rain in the afternoon as Malcolm walked home from the Pool, but before the sun set it had cleared up; and as he went through the park towards the dingy suburb, the first heralds of the returning youth of the year met him from all sides in the guise of odours – not yet those of flowers, but the more ethereal if less sweet, scents of buds and grass, and ever pure earth moistened with the waters of heaven. And to his surprise he found that his sojourn in a great city, although as yet so brief, had already made the open earth with its corn and grass more dear to him and wonderful. But when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed coming slowly up this way.
After not a few inquiries, he found himself at a stationer's shop, a poor little place, and learned that Mr Graham lodged over it, and was then at home.
He was shown up into a shabby room, with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers daubed with sickly paint, a table with a stained red cover, a few bookshelves in a recess over the washstand, and two chairs seated with haircloth. On one of these, by the side of a small fire in a neglected grate, sat the schoolmaster reading his Plato. On the table beside him lay his Greek New Testament, and an old edition of George Herbert. He looked up as the door opened, and, notwithstanding his strange dress, recognising at once his friend and pupil, rose hastily, and welcomed him with hand and eyes, and countenance, but without word spoken. For a few moments the two stood silent, holding each the other's hand, and gazing each in the other's eyes, then sat down, still speechless, one on each side of the fire.
They looked at each other and smiled, and again a minute passed. Then the schoolmaster rose, rang the bell, and when it was answered by a rather careworn young woman, requested her to bring tea.
"I'm sorry I cannot give you cakes or fresh butter, my lord," he said with a smile, and they were the first words spoken. "The former is not to be had, and the latter is beyond my means. But what I have will content one who is able to count that abundance which many would count privation."
He spoke in the choice word, measured phrase, and stately speech which Wordsworth says "grave livers do in Scotland use," but under it all rang a tone of humour, as if he knew the form of his utterance too important for the subject matter of it, and would gently amuse with it both his visitor and himself.
He was a man of middle height, but so thin that notwithstanding a slight stoop in the shoulders, he looked rather tall; much on the young side of fifty, but apparently a good way on the other, partly from the little hair he had being grey. He had sandy coloured whiskers, and a shaven chin. Except his large sweetly closed mouth, and rather long upper lip, there was nothing very notable in his features. At ordinary moments, indeed, there was nothing in his appearance other than insignificant to the ordinary observer. His eyes were of a pale quiet blue, but when he smiled they sparkled and throbbed with light. He wore the same old black tailcoat he had worn last in his school at Portlossie, but the white neckcloth he had always been seen in there had given place to a black one: that was the sole change in the aspect of the man.
About Portlossie he had been greatly respected, notwithstanding the rumour that he was a "stickit minister," that is, one who had failed in the attempt to preach; and when the presbytery dismissed him on the charge of heresy, there had been many tears on the part of his pupils, and much childish defiance of his unenviable successor.
Few words passed between the two men until they had had their tea, and then followed a long talk, Malcolm first explaining his present position, and then answering many questions of the master as to how things had gone since he left. Next followed anxious questions on Malcolm's side as to how his friend found himself in the prison of London.
"I do miss the air, and the laverocks (skylarks), and the gowans," he confessed; "but I have them all in my mind, and at my age a man ought to be able to satisfy himself with the idea of a thing in his soul. Of outer things that have contributed to his inward growth, the memory alone may then well be enough. The sights which, when I lie down to sleep, rise before that inward eye Wordsworth calls the bliss of solitude, have upon me power almost of a spiritual vision, so purely radiant are they of that which dwells in them, the divine thought which is their substance, their hypostasis. My boy! I doubt if you can tell what it is to know the presence of the living God in and about you."
"I houp I hae a bit notion o' 't, sir," said Malcolm.
"But believe me that in any case, however much a man may have of it, he may have it endlessly more. Since I left the cottage where I hoped to end my days under the shadow of the house of your ancestors, since I came into this region of bricks and smoke, and the crowded tokens too plain of want and care, I have found a reality in the things I had been trying to teach you at Portlossie, such as I had before imagined only in my best moments. And more still: I am now far better able to understand how it must have been with our Lord when he was trying to teach the men and women of Palestine to have faith in God. Depend upon it, we get our best use of life in learning by the facts of its ebb and flow to understand the Son of Man. And again, when we understand Him, then only do we understand our life and ourselves. Never can we know the majesty of the will of God concerning us except by understanding Jesus and the work the Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing is of a more heavenly delight than to enter into a dusky room in the house of your friend, and there, with a blow of the heavenly rod, draw light from the dark wall – open a window, a fountain of the eternal light, and let in the truth which is the life of the world. Joyously would a man spend his life, right joyously even if the road led to the gallows, in showing the grandest he sees – the splendid purities of the divine religion – the mountain top up to which the voice of God is ever calling his children. Yes, I can understand even how a man might live, like the good hermits of old, in triumphant meditation upon such all satisfying truths, and let the waves of the world's time wash by him in unheeded flow until his cell changed to his tomb, and his spirit soared free. But to spend your time in giving little lessons when you have great ones to give; in teaching the multiplication table the morning after you made at midnight a grand discovery upon the very summits of the moonlit mountain range of the mathematics; in enforcing the old law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself when you know in your own heart that not a soul can ever learn to keep it without first learning to fulfil an infinitely greater one – to love his neighbour even as Christ hath loved him – then indeed one may well grow disheartened, and feel as if he were not in the place prepared for, and at the work required of him. But it is just then that he must go back to school himself and learn not only the patience of God who keeps the whole dull obstinate world alive, while generation after generation is born and vanishes, and of the mighty multitude only one here and there rises up from the fetters of humanity into the freedom of the sons of God – and yet goes on teaching the whole, and bringing every man who will but turn his ear a little towards the voice that calls him, nearer and nearer to the second birth – of sonship and liberty – not only this divine patience must he learn, but the divine insight as well, which in every form spies the reflex of the truth it cannot contain, and in every lowliest lesson sees the highest drawn nearer, and the soul growing alive unto God."
CHAPTER XXII: RICHMOND PARK
The next day at noon, mounted on Kelpie, Malcolm was in attendance upon his mistress, who was eager after a gallop in Richmond Park. Lord Liftore, who had intended to accompany her, had not made his appearance yet, but Florimel did not seem the less desirous of setting out at the time she had appointed Malcolm. The fact was she had said one o'clock to Liftore, intending twelve, that she might get away without him. Kelpie seemed on her good behaviour, and they started quietly enough. By the time they had got out of the park upon the Kensington Road, however, the evil spirit had begun to wake in her. But even when she was quietest, she was nothing to be trusted, and about London Malcolm found he dared never let his thoughts go, or take his attention quite off her ears. They got to Kew Bridge in safety nevertheless, though whether they were to get safely across was doubtful all the time they were upon it, for again and again she seemed on the very point of clearing the stone balustrade, but for the terrible bit and chain without which Malcolm never dared ride her. Still, whatever her caracoles or escapades, they caused Florimel nothing but amusement, for her confidence in Malcolm – that he could do whatever he believed he could – was unbounded. They got through Richmond – with some trouble, but hardly were they well into the park, when Lord Liftore, followed by his groom, came suddenly up behind them at such a rate as quite destroyed the small stock of equanimity Kelpie had to go upon. She bolted.
Florimel was a good rider, and knew herself quite mistress of her horse, and if she now followed, it was at her own will, and with a design; she wanted to make the horses behind her bolt also if she could. His lordship came flying after her, and his groom after him, but she kept increasing her pace until they were all at full stretch, thundering over the grass – upon which Malcolm had at once turned Kelpie, giving her little rein and plenty of spur. Gradually Florimel slackened speed, and at last pulled up suddenly. Liftore and his groom went past her like the wind. She turned at right angles and galloped back to the road. There, on a gaunt thoroughbred, with a furnace of old life in him yet, sat Lenorme, whom she had already passed and signalled to remain thereabout. They drew alongside of each other, but they did not shake hands; they only looked each in the other's eyes, and for a few moments neither spoke. The three riders were now far away over the park, and still Kelpie held on and the other horses after her. "I little expected such a pleasure," said Lenorme.
"I meant to give it you, though," said Florimel, with a merry laugh. "Bravo, Kelpie! take them with you," she cried, looking after the still retreating horsemen. "I have got a familiar since I saw you last, Raoul," she went on. "See if I don't get some good for us out of him! – We'll move gently along the road here, and by the time Liftore's horse is spent, we shall be ready for a good gallop. I want to tell you all about it. I did not mean Liftore to be here when I sent you word, but he has been too much for me."
Lenorme replied with a look of gratitude; and as they walked their horses along, she told him all concerning Malcolm and Kelpie.
"Liftore hates him already," she said, "and I can hardly wonder; but you must not, for you will find him useful. He is one I can depend upon. You should have seen the look Liftore gave him when he told him he could not sit his mare! It would have been worth gold to you."
Lenorme winced a little.
"He thinks no end of his riding," Florimel continued; "but if it were not so improper to have secrets with another gentleman, I would tell you that he rides – just pretty well."
Lenorme's great brow gloomed over his eyes like the Eiger in a mist, but he said nothing yet.
"He wants to ride Kelpie, and I have told my groom to let him have her. Perhaps she'll break his neck."
Lenorme smiled grimly.
"You wouldn't mind, would you, Raoul?" added Florimel, with a roguish look.
"Would you mind telling me, Florimel, what you mean by the impropriety of having secrets with another gentleman? Am I the other gentleman?"
"Why, of course! You know Liftore imagined he has only to name the day."
"And you allow an idiot like that to cherish such a degrading idea of you."
"Why, Raoul! what does it matter what a fool like him thinks?"
"If you don't mind it, I do. I feel it an insult to me that he should dare think of you like that."
"I don't know. I suppose I shall have to marry him some day."
"Lady Lossie, do you want to make me hate you?"
"Don't be foolish, Raoul. It won't be tomorrow – nor the next day. Freuet euch des Lebens!"
"0 Florimel! what is to come of this? Do you want to break my heart? – I hate to talk rubbish. You won't kill me – you will only ruin my work, and possibly drive me mad."
Florimel drew close to his side, laid her hand on his arm, and looked in his face with a witching entreaty.
"We have the present, Raoul," she said.
"So has the butterfly," answered Lenorme; "but I had rather be the caterpillar with a future. – Why don't you put a stop to the man's lovemaking? He can't love you or any woman. He does not know what love means. It makes me ill to hear him when he thinks he is paying you irresistible compliments. They are so silly! so mawkish! Good heavens, Florimel! can you imagine that smile every day and always? Like the rest of his class he seems to think himself perfectly justified in making fools of women. I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first. I want you to be my embodied vision of life, that I may for ever worship at your feet – live in you, die with you: such bliss, even were there nothing beyond, would be enough for the heart of a God to bestow."
"Stop, stop, Raoul; I'm not worthy of such love," said Florimel, again laying her hand on his arm. "I do wish for your sake I had been born a village girl."
"If you had been, then I might have wished for your sake that I had been born a marquis. As it is I would rather be a painter than any nobleman in Europe – that is, with you to love me. Your love is my patent of nobility. But I may glorify what you love – and tell you that I can confer something on you also – what none of your noble admirers can. – God forgive me! you will make me hate them all!"
"Raoul, this won't do at all," said Florimel, with the authority that should belong only to the one in the right. And indeed for the moment she felt the dignity of restraining a too impetuous passion. "You will spoil everything. I dare not come to your studio if you are going to behave like this. It would be very wrong of me. And if I am never to come and see you, I shall die – I know I shall."
The girl was so full of the delight of the secret love between them, that she cared only to live in the present as if there were no future beyond: Lenorme wanted to make that future like but better than the present. The word marriage put Florimel in a rage. She thought herself superior to Lenorme, because he, in the dread of losing her, would have her marry him at once, while she was more than content with the bliss of seeing him now and then. Often and often her foolish talk stung him with bitter pain – worst of all when it compelled him to doubt whether there was that in her to be loved as he was capable of loving. Yet always the conviction that there was a deep root of nobleness in her nature again got uppermost; and, had it not been so, I fear he would, nevertheless, have continued to prove her irresistible as often as she chose to exercise upon him the full might of her witcheries. At one moment she would reveal herself in such a sudden rush of tenderness as seemed possible only to one ready to become his altogether and for ever; the next she would start away as if she had never meant anything, and talk as if not a thought were in her mind beyond the cultivation of a pleasant acquaintance doomed to pass with the season, if not with the final touches to her portrait. Or she would fall to singing some song he had taught her, more likely a certain one he had written in a passionate mood of bitter tenderness, with the hope of stinging her love to some show of deeper life; but would, while she sang, look with merry defiance in his face, as if she adopted in seriousness what he had written in loving and sorrowful satire.
They rode in silence for some hundred yards. At length he spoke, replying to her last asseveration. "Then what can you gain, child," he said –
"Will you dare to call me child – a marchioness in my own right!" she cried, playfully threatening him with uplifted whip, in the handle of which the little jewels sparkled.
"What, then, can you gain, my lady marchioness," he resumed, with soft seriousness, and a sad smile, "by marrying one of your own rank? – I should lay new honour and consideration at your feet. I am young. I have done fairly well already. But I have done nothing to what I could do now, if only my heart lay safe in the port of peace: – you know where alone that is for me my – lady marchioness. And you know too that the names of great painters go down with honour from generation to generation, when my lord this or my lord that is remembered only as a label to the picture that makes the painter famous. I am not a great painter yet, but I will be one if you will be good to me. And men shall say, when they look on your portrait, in ages to come: No wonder he was such a painter when he had such a woman to paint."
He spoke the words with a certain tone of dignified playfulness.
"When shall the woman sit to you again, painter?" said Florimel – sole reply to his rhapsody.
The painter thought a little. Then he said:
"I don't like that tire woman of yours. She has two evil eyes – one for each of us. I have again and again caught their expression when they were upon us, and she thought none were upon her: I can see without lifting my head when I am painting, and my art has made me quick at catching expressions, and, I hope, at interpreting them."
"I don't altogether like her myself," said Florimel. "Of late I am not so sure of her as I used to be. But what can I do? I must have somebody with me, you know. – A thought strikes me. Yes. I won't say now what it is lest I should disappoint my – painter; but – yes – you shall see what I will dare for you, faithless man!"
She set off at a canter, turned on to the grass, and rode to meet Liftore, whom she saw in the distance returning, followed by the two grooms.
"Come on, Raoul," she cried, looking back; "I must account for you. He sees I have not been alone."
Lenorme joined her, and they rode along side by side.
The earl and the painter knew each other: as they drew near, the painter lifted his hat, and the earl nodded.
"You owe Mr Lenorme some acknowledgment, my lord, for taking charge of me after your sudden desertion," said Florimel. "Why did you gallop off in such a mad fashion?"
"I am sorry," began Liftore a little embarrassed.
"Oh! don't trouble yourself to apologise," said Florimel. "I have always understood that great horsemen find a horse more interesting than a lady. It is a mark of their breed, I am told."
She knew that Liftore would not be ready to confess he could not hold his hack.
"If it hadn't been for Mr Lenorme," she added, "I should have been left without a squire, subject to any whim of my four footed servant here."
As she spoke she patted the neck of her horse. The earl, on his side, had been looking the painter's horse up and down with a would be humorous expression of criticism.
"I beg your pardon, marchioness," he replied; "but you pulled up so quickly that we shot past you. I thought you were close behind, and preferred following. – Seen his best days, eh, Lenorme?" he concluded, willing to change the subject.
"I fancy he doesn't think so," returned the painter. "I bought him out of a butterman's cart, three months ago. He's been coming to himself ever since. Look at his eye, my lord."
"Are you knowing in horses, then?"
"I can't say I am, beyond knowing how to treat them something like human beings."
"That's no ill," said Malcolm to himself. He was just near enough, on the pawing and foaming Kelpie, to catch what was passing. – "The fallow 'll du. He's worth a score o' sic yerls as yon."
"Ha! ha!" said his lordship; "I don't know about that – He's not the best of tempers, I can see. But look at that demon of Lady Lossie's – that black mare there! I wish you could teach her some of your humanity.
"– By the way, Florimel, I think now we are upon the grass," – he said it loftily, as if submitting to an injustice – "I will presume to mount the reprobate."
The gallop had communicated itself to Liftore's blood, and, besides, he thought after such a run Kelpie would be less extravagant in her behaviour.
"She is at your service," said Florimel.
He dismounted, his groom rode up, he threw him the reins, and called Malcolm.
"Bring your mare here, my man," he said.
Malcolm rode her up half way, and dismounted.
"If your lordship is going to ride her," he said, "will you please get on her here. I would rather not take her near the other horses."
"Well, you know her better than I do. – You and I must ride about the same length, I think."
So saying his lordship carelessly measured the stirrup leather against his arm, and took the reins.
"Stand well forward, my lord. Don't mind turning your back to her head: I'll look after her teeth; you mind her hind hoof," said Malcolm, with her head in one hand and the stirrup in the other.
Kelpie stood rigid as a rock, and the earl swung himself up cleverly enough. But hardly was he in the saddle, and Malcolm had just let her go, when she plunged and lashed out; then, having failed to unseat her rider, stood straight up on her hind legs.
"Give her her head, my lord," cried Malcolm.