CHAPTER L: THE DEMONESS AT BAY

When he reached the yard of the mews, the uproar had nothing abated. But when he cried out to Kelpie, through it all came a whinny of appeal, instantly followed by a scream. When he got up to the lanterns, he found a group of wrathful men with stable forks surrounding the poor animal, from whom the blood was streaming before and behind. Fierce as she was, she dared not move, but stood trembling, with the sweat of terror pouring from her. Yet her eye showed that not even terror had cowed her. She was but biding her time. Her master's first impulse was to scatter the men right and left, but on second thoughts, of which he was even then capable, he saw that they might have been driven to apparent brutality in defence of their lives, and besides he could not tell what Kelpie might do if suddenly released. So he caught her by the broken halter, and told them to fall back. They did so carefully—it seemed unwillingly. But the mare had eyes and ears only for her master. What she had never done before, she nosed him over face and shoulders, trembling all the time. Suddenly one of her tormentors darted forward, and gave her a terrible prod in the off hind quarter. But he paid dearly for it. Ere he could draw back, she lashed out, and shot him half across the yard with his knee joint broken. The whole set of them rushed at her.

"Leave her alone," shouted Malcolm, "or I will take her part. Between us we'll do for a dozen of you."

"The devil's in her," said one of them.

"You'll find more of him in that rascal groaning yonder. You had better see to him. He'll never do such a thing again, I fancy. Where is Merton?"

They drew off and went to help their comrade, who lay senseless.

When Malcolm would have led Kelpie in, she stopped suddenly at the stable-door, and started back shuddering, as if the memory of what she had endured there overcame her. Every fibre of her trembled. He saw that she must have been pitifully used before she broke loose and got out. But she yielded to his coaxing, and he led her to her stall without difficulty. He wished Lady Clementina herself could have been his witness how she knew her friend and trusted him. Had she seen how the poor bleeding thing rejoiced over him, she could not have doubted that his treatment had been in part at least a success.

Kelpie had many enemies amongst the men of the mews. Merton had gone out for the evening, and they had taken the opportunity of getting into her stable and tormenting her. At length she broke her fastenings; they fled, and she rushed out after them.

They carried the maimed man to the hospital, where his leg was immediately amputated.

Malcolm washed and dried his poor animal, handling her as gently as possible, for she was in a sad plight. It was plain he must not have her here any longer: worse to her at least was sure to follow. He went up, trembling himself now, to Mrs Merton. She told him she was just running to fetch him when he arrived: she had no idea how ill he was. But he felt all the better for the excitement, and after he had taken a cup of strong tea, wrote to Mr Soutar to provide men on whom he could depend, if possible the same who had taken her there before, to await Kelpie's arrival at Aberdeen. There he must also find suitable housing and attention for her at any expense until further directions, or until, more probably, he should claim her himself. He added many instructions to be given as to her treatment.

Until Merton returned he kept watch, then went back to the chamber of his torture, which, like Kelpie, he shuddered to enter. The cook let him in, and gave him his candle, but hardly had he closed his door when a tap came to it, and there stood Rose, his preserver. He could not help feeling embarrassed when he saw her.

"I see you don't trust me," she said.

"I do trust you," he answered. "Will you bring me some water. I dare not drink anything that has been standing."

She looked at him with inquiring eyes, nodded her head, and went. When she returned, he drank the water.

"There! you see I trust you," he said with a laugh. "But there are people about who for certain reasons want to get rid of me: will you be on my side?"

"That I will," she answered eagerly.

"I have not got my plans laid yet; but will you meet me somewhere near this tomorrow night? I shall not be at home, perhaps, all day."

She stared at him with great eyes, but agreed at once, and they appointed time and place. He then bade her good night, and the moment she left him lay down on the bed to think. But he did not trouble himself yet to unravel the plot against him, or determine whether the violence he had suffered had the same origin with the poisoning. Nor was the question merely how to continue to serve his sister without danger to his life; for he had just learned what rendered it absolutely imperative that she should be removed from her present position. Mrs Merton had told him that Lady Lossie was about to accompany Lady Bellair and Lord Liftore to the continent. That must not be, whatever means might be necessary to prevent it. Before he went to sleep things had cleared themselves up considerably.

He woke much better, and rose at his usual hour. Kelpie rejoiced him by affording little other sign of the cruelty she had suffered than the angry twitching of her skin when hand or brush approached a wound. The worst fear was that some few white hairs might by and by in consequence fleck her spotless black. Having urgently committed her to Merton's care, he mounted Honour, and rode to the Aberdeen wharf. There to his relief, time growing precious, he learned that the same smack in which Kelpie had come was to sail the next morning for Aberdeen. He arranged at once for her passage, and, before he left, saw to every contrivance he could think of for her safety and comfort. He warned the crew concerning her temper, but at the same time prejudiced them in her favour by the argument of a few sovereigns. He then rode to the Chelsea Reach, where the Psyche had now grown to be a feature of the river in the eyes of the dwellers upon its banks.

At his whistle, Davy tumbled into the dinghy like a round ball over the gunwale, and was rowing for the shore ere his whistle had ceased ringing in Malcolm's own ears. He left him with his horse, went on board, and gave various directions to Travers; then took Davy with him, and bought many things at different shops, which he ordered to be delivered to Davy when he should call for them. Having next instructed him to get everything on board as soon as possible, and appointed to meet him at the same place and hour he had arranged with Rose, he went home.

A little anxious lest Florimel might have wanted him, for it was now past the hour at which he usually waited her orders, he learned to his relief that she was gone shopping with Lady Bellair, upon which he set out for the hospital, whither they had carried the man Kelpie had so terribly mauled. He went, not merely led by sympathy, but urged by a suspicion also which he desired to verify or remove. On the plea of identification, he was permitted to look at him for a moment, but not to speak to him. It was enough: he recognised him at once as the same whose second attack he had foiled in the Regent's Park. He remembered having seen him about the stable, but had never spoken to him. Giving the nurse a sovereign, and Mr Soutar's address, he requested her to let that gentleman know as soon as it was possible to conjecture the time of his leaving. Returning, he gave Merton a hint to keep his eye on the man, and some money to spend for him as he judged best. He then took Kelpie for an airing. To his surprise she fatigued him so much that when he had put her up again he was glad to go and lie down.

When it came near the time for meeting Rose and Davy, he got his things together in the old carpetbag, which held all he cared for, and carried it with him. As he drew near the spot, he saw Davy already there, keeping a sharp look out on all sides. Presently Rose appeared, but drew back when she saw Davy. Malcolm went to her.

"Rose," he said, "I am going to ask you to do me a great favour. But you cannot except you are able to trust me."

"I do trust you," she answered.

"All I can tell you now is that you must go with that boy tomorrow. Before night you shall know more. Will you do it?"

"I will," answered Rose. "I dearly love a secret."

"I promise to let you understand it, if you do just as I tell you."

"I will."

"Be at this very spot then tomorrow morning, at six o'clock. Come here, Davy. This boy will take you where I shall tell him."

She looked from the one to the other.

"I'll risk it," she said.

"Put on a clean frock, and take a change of linen with you and your dressing things. No harm shall come to you."

"I'm not afraid," she answered, but looked as if she would cry.

"Of course you will not tell anyone."

"I will not, Mr MacPhail."

"You are trusting me a great deal, Rose; but I am trusting you too —more than you think.—Be off with that bag, Davy, and be here at six tomorrow morning, to carry this young woman's for her."

Davy vanished.

"Now, Rose," continued Malcolm, "you had better go and make your preparations."

"Is that all, sir?" she said.

"Yes. I shall see you tomorrow. Be brave."

Something in Malcolm's tone and manner seemed to work strangely on the girl. She gazed up at him half frightened, but submissive, and went at once, looking, however, sadly disappointed.

Malcolm had intended to go and tell Mr Graham of his plans that same night, but he found himself too much exhausted to walk to Camden Town. And thinking over it, he saw that it might be as well if he took the bold measure he contemplated without revealing it to his friend, to whom the knowledge might be the cause of inconvenience. He therefore went home and to bed, that he might be strong for the next day.



CHAPTER LI: THE PSYCHE

He rose early the next morning, and having fed and dressed Kelpie, strapped her blanket behind her saddle, and, by all the macadamized ways he could find, rode her to the wharf—near where the Thames tunnel had just been commenced. He had no great difficulty with her on the way, though it was rather nervous work at times. But of late her submission to her master had been decidedly growing. When he reached the wharf he rode her straight along the gangway on to the deck of the smack, as the easiest if not perhaps the safest way of getting her on board. As soon as she was properly secured, and he had satisfied himself as to the provision they had made for her, impressed upon the captain the necessity of being bountiful to her, and brought a loaf of sugar on board for her use, he left her with a lighter heart than he had had ever since first he fetched her from the same deck.

It was a long way to walk home, but he felt much better, and thought nothing of it. And all the way, to his delight, the wind met him in the face. A steady westerly breeze was blowing. If God makes his angels winds, as the Psalmist says, here was one sent to wait upon him. He reached Portland Place in time to present himself for orders at the usual hour. On these occasions, his mistress not unfrequently saw him herself; but to make sure, he sent up the request that she would speak with him.

"I am sorry to hear that you have been ill, Malcolm," she said kindly, as he entered the room, where happily he found her alone.

"I am quite well now, thank you, my lady," he returned. "I thought your ladyship would like to hear something I happened to come to the knowledge of the other day."

"Yes? What was that?"

"I called at Mr Lenorme's to learn what news there might be of him. The housekeeper let me go up to his painting room; and what should I see there, my lady, but the portrait of my lord marquis more beautiful than ever, the brown smear all gone, and the likeness, to my mind, greater than before!"

"Then Mr Lenorme is come home!" cried Florimel, scarce attempting to conceal the pleasure his report gave her.

"That I cannot say," said Malcolm. "His housekeeper had a letter from him a few days ago from Newcastle. If he is come back, I do not think she knows it. It seems strange, for who would touch one of his pictures but himself?—except, indeed, he got some friend to set it to rights for your ladyship. Anyhow, I thought you would like to see it again."

"I will go at once," Florimel said, rising hastily. "Get the horses, Malcolm, as fast as you can."

"If my Lord Liftore should come before we start?" he suggested.

"Make haste," returned his mistress, impatiently.

Malcolm did make haste, and so did Florimel. What precisely was in her thoughts who shall say, when she could not have told herself? But doubtless the chance of seeing Lenorme urged her more than the desire to see her father's portrait. Within twenty minutes they were riding down Grosvenor Place, and happily heard no following hoofbeats. When they came near the river, Malcolm rode up to her and said,

"Would your ladyship allow me to put up the horses in Mr Lenorme's stable? I think I could show your ladyship a point or two that may have escaped you."

Florimel thought for a moment, and concluded it would be less awkward, would indeed tend rather to her advantage with Lenorme, should he really be there, to have Malcolm with her.

"Very well," she answered. "I see no objection. I will ride round with you to the stable, and we can go in the back way."

They did so. The gardener took the horses, and they went up to the study. Lenorme was not there, and everything was just as when Malcolm was last in the room. Florimel was much disappointed, but Malcolm talked to her about the portrait, and did all he could to bring back vivid the memory of her father. At length with a little sigh she made a movement to go.

"Has your ladyship ever seen the river from the next room?" said Malcolm, and, as he spoke, threw open the door of communication, near which they stood.

Florimel, who was always ready to see, walked straight into the drawing room, and went to a window.

"There is that yacht lying there still!" remarked Malcolm. "Does she not remind you of the Psyche, my lady?"

"Every boat does that," answered his mistress. "I dream about her. But I couldn't tell her from many another."

"People used to boats, my lady, learn to know them like the faces of their friends.—What a day for a sail!"

"Do you suppose that one is for hire?" said Florimel.

"We can ask," replied Malcolm; and with that went to another window, raised the sash, put his head out, and whistled. Over tumbled Davy into the dinghy at the Psyche's stern, unloosed the painter, and was rowing for the shore ere the minute was out.

"Why, they're answering your whistle already!" said Florimel.

"A whistle goes farther, and perhaps is more imperative than any other call," returned Malcolm evasively, "Will your ladyship come down and hear what they say?"

A wave from the slow silting lagoon of her girlhood came washing over the sands between, and Florimel flew merrily down the stair and across ball and garden and road to the riverbank, where was a little wooden stage or landing place, with a few steps, at which the dinghy was just arriving.

"Will you take us on board and show us your boat?" said Malcolm.

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Davy.

Without a moment's hesitation, Florimel took Malcolm's offered hand, and stepped into the boat. Malcolm took the oars, and shot the little tub across the river. When they got alongside the cutter, Travers reached down both his hands for hers, and Malcolm held one of his for her foot, and Florimel sprang on deck.

"Young woman on board, Davy?" whispered Malcolm.

"Ay, ay, sir—doon i' the fore," answered Davy, and Malcolm stood by his mistress.

"She is like the Psyche," said Florimel, turning to him, "only the mast is not so tall."

"Her topmast is struck, you see my lady—to make sure of her passing clear under the bridges."

"Ask them if we couldn't go down the river a little way," said Florimel. "I should so like to see the houses from it!"

Malcolm conferred a moment with Travers and returned.

"They are quite willing, my lady," he said.

"What fun!" cried Florimel, her girlish spirit all at the surface. "How I should like to run away from horrid London altogether, and never hear of it again!—Dear old Lossie House! and the boats! and the fishermen!" she added meditatively.

The anchor was already up, and the yacht drifting with the falling tide. A moment more and she spread a low treble reefed mainsail behind, a little jib before, and the western breeze filled and swelled and made them alive, and with wind and tide she went swiftly down the smooth stream. Florimel clapped her hands with delight. The shores and all their houses fled up the river. They slid past rowboats, and great heavy barges loaded to the lip, with huge red sails and yellow, glowing and gleaming in the hot sun. For one moment the shadow of Vauxhall Bridge gloomed like a death cloud, chill and cavernous, over their heads; then out again they shot into the lovely light and heat of the summer world.

"It's well we ain't got to shoot Putney or Battersea," said Travers with a grim smile, as he stood shaping her course by inches with his magic-like steering, in the midst of a little covey of pleasure boats: "with this wind we might ha' brought either on 'em about our ears like an old barn."

"This is life!" cried Florimel, as the river bore them nearer and nearer to the vortex—deeper and deeper into the tumult of London.

How solemn the silent yet never resting highway!—almost majestic in the stillness of its hurrying might as it rolled heedless past houses and wharfs that crowded its brinks. They darted through under Westminster Bridge, and boats and barges more and more numerous covered the stream. Waterloo Bridge, Blackfriars' Bridge they passed. Sunlight all, and flashing water, and gleaming oars, and gay boats, and endless motion! out of which rose calm, solemn, reposeful, the resting yet hovering dome of St Paul's, with its satellite spires, glittering in the tremulous hot air that swathed in multitudinous ripples the mighty city.

Southwark Bridge—and only London Bridge lay between them and the open river, still widening as it flowed to the aged ocean. Through the centre arch they shot, and lo! a world of masts, waiting to woo with white sails the winds that should bear them across deserts of water to lands of wealth and mystery. Through the labyrinth led the highway of the stream, and downward they still swept—past the Tower, and past the wharf where that morning Malcolm had said goodbye for a time to his four footed subject and friend. The smack's place was empty. With her hugest of sails, she was tearing and flashing away, out of their sight, far down the river before them.

Through dingy dreary Limehouse they sank, and coasted the melancholy, houseless Isle of Dogs; but on all sides were ships and ships, and when they thinned at last, Greenwich rose before them. London and the parks looked unendurable from this more varied life, more plentiful air, and above all more abundant space. The very spirit of freedom seemed to wave his wings about the yacht, fanning full her sails.

Florimel breathed as if she never could have enough of the sweet wind; each breath gave her all the boundless region whence it blew; she gazed as if she would fill her soul with the sparkling gray of the water, the sun melted blue of the sky, and the incredible green of the flat shores. For minutes she would be silent, her parted lips revealing her absorbed delight, then break out in a volley of questions, now addressing Malcolm, now Travers. She tried Davy too, but Davy knew nothing except his duty here. The Thames was like an unknown eternity to the creature of the Wan Water— about which, however, he could have told her a thousand things.

Down and down the river they flew, and not until miles and miles of meadows had come between her and London, not indeed until Gravesend appeared, did it occur to Florimel that perhaps it might be well to think by and by of returning. But she trusted everything to Malcolm, who of course would see that everything was as it ought to be.

Her excitement began to flag a little. She was getting tired. The bottle had been strained by the ferment of the wine. She turned to Malcolm.

"Had we not better be putting about?" she said. "I should like to go on for ever—but we must come another day, better provided. We shall hardly be in time for lunch."

It was nearly four o'clock, but she rarely looked at her watch, and indeed wound it up only now and then.

"Will you go below and have some lunch, my lady?" said Malcolm.

"There can't be anything on board!" she answered.

"Come and see, my lady," rejoined Malcolm, and led the way to the companion.

When she saw the little cabin, she gave a cry of delight.

"Why, it is just like our own cabin in the Psyche," she said, "only smaller! Is it not, Malcolm?"

"It is smaller, my lady," returned Malcolm, "but then there is a little state room beyond."

On the table was a nice meal—cold, but not the less agreeable in the summer weather. Everything looked charming. There were flowers; the linen was snowy; and the bread was the very sort Florimel liked best.

"It is a perfect fairy tale!" she cried. "And I declare here is our crest on the forks and spoons!—What does it all mean, Malcolm?"

But Malcolm had slipped away, and gone on deck again, leaving her to food and conjecture, while he brought Rose up from the fore cabin for a little air. Finding her fast asleep, however, he left her undisturbed.

Florimel finished her meal, and set about examining the cabin more closely. The result was bewilderment. How could a yacht, fitted with such completeness, such luxury, be lying for hire in the Thames? As for the crest on the plate, that was a curious coincidence: many people had the same crest. But both materials and colours were like those of the Pysche! Then the pretty bindings on the book shelves attracted her: every book was either one she knew or one of which Malcolm had spoken to her! He must have had a hand in the business! Next she opened the door of the stateroom; but when she saw the lovely little white berth, and the indications of every comfort belonging to a lady's chamber, she could keep her pleasure to herself no longer. She hastened to the companionway, and called Malcolm.

"What does it all mean?" she said, her eyes and cheeks glowing with delight.

"It means, my lady, that you are on board your own yacht, the Pysche. I brought her with me from Portlossie, and have had her fitted up according to the wish you once expressed to my lord, your father, that you could sleep on board. Now you might make a voyage of many days in her."

"Oh, Malcolm!" was all Florimel could answer. She was too pleased to think as yet of any of the thousand questions that might naturally have followed.

"Why, you've got the Arabian Nights, and all my favourite books there!" she said at length.—"How long shall we have before we get among the ships again?"

She fancied she had given orders to return, and that the boat had been put about.

"A good many hours, my lady," answered Malcolm.

"Ah, of course!" she returned; "it takes much longer against wind and tide.—But my time is my own," she added, rather in the manner of one asserting a freedom she did not feel, "and I don't see why I should trouble myself. It will make some to do, I daresay, if I don't appear at dinner; but it won't do anybody any harm. They wouldn't break their hearts if they never saw me again."

"Not one of them, my lady," said Malcolm.

She lifted her head sharply, but took no farther notice of his remark.

"I won't be plagued any more," she said, holding counsel with herself, but intending Malcolm to hear. "I will break with them rather. Why should I not be as free as Clementina? She comes and goes when and where she likes, and does what she pleases."

"Why, indeed?" said Malcolm; and a pause followed, during which Florimel stood apparently thinking, but in reality growing sleepy.

"I will lie down a little," she said, "with one of those lovely books."

The excitement, the air, and the pleasure generally had wearied her. Nothing could have suited Malcolm better. He left her. She went to her berth, and fell fast asleep.

When she awoke, it was some time before she could think where she was. A strange ghostly light was about her, in which she could see nothing plain; but the motion helped her to understand. She rose, and crept to the companion ladder, and up on deck. Wonder upon wonder! A clear full moon reigned high in the heavens, and below there was nothing but water, gleaming with her molten face, or rushing past the boat lead coloured, gray, and white. Here and there a vessel —a snow cloud of sails—would glide between them and the moon, and turn black from truck to waterline.

The mast of the Psyche had shot up to its full height; the reef points of the mainsail were loose, and the gaff was crowned with its topsail; foresail and jib were full; and she was flying as if her soul thirsted within her after infinite spaces. Yet what more could she want? All around her was wave rushing upon wave, and above her blue heaven and regnant moon. Florimel gave a great sigh of delight.

But what did it—what could it mean? What was Malcolm about? Where was he taking her? What would London say to such an escapade extraordinary? Lady Bellair would be the first to believe she had run away with her groom—she knew so many instances of that sort of thing! and Lord Liftore would be the next. It was too bad of Malcolm! But she did not feel very angry with him, notwithstanding, for had he not done it to give her pleasure? And assuredly he had not failed. He knew better than anyone how to please her—better even than Lenorme.

She looked around her. No one was to be seen but Davie, who was steering. The mainsail hid the men, and Rose, having been on deck for two or three hours, was again below. She turned to Davy. But the boy had been schooled, and only answered,

"I maunna sae naething sae lang's I'm steerin', mem."

She called Malcolm. He was beside her ere his name had left her lips. The boy's reply had irritated her, and, coming upon this sudden and utter change in her circumstances, made her feel as one no longer lady of herself and her people, but a prisoner.

"Once more, what does this mean, Malcolm?" she said, in high displeasure. "You have deceived me shamefully! You left me to believe we were on our way back to London—and here we are out at sea! Am I no longer your mistress? Am I a child, to be taken where you please?—And what, pray, is to become of the horses you left at Mr Lenorme's?"

Malcolm was glad of a question he was prepared to answer.

"They are in their own stalls by this time, my lady. I took care of that."

"Then it was all a trick to carry me off against my will!" she cried, with growing indignation.

"Hardly against your will, my lady," said Malcolm, embarrassed and thoughtful, in a tone deprecating and apologetic.

"Utterly against my will!" insisted Florimel. "Could I ever have consented to go to sea with a boatful of men, and not a woman on board? You have disgraced me, Malcolm."

Between anger and annoyance she was on the point of crying.

"It's not so bad as that, my lady.—Here, Rose!"

At his word, Rose appeared.

"I've brought one of Lady Bellair's maids for your service, my lady," Malcolm went on. "She will do the best she can to wait on you."

Florimel gave her a look.

"I don't remember you," she said.

"No, my lady. I was in the kitchen."

"Then you can't be of much use to me."

"A willing heart goes a long way, my lady," said Rose, prettily.

"That is fine," returned Florimel, rather pleased. "Can you get me some tea?"

"Yes, my lady."

Florimel turned, and, much to Malcolm's content vouchsafing him not a word more, went below.

Presently a little silver lamp appeared in the roof of the cabin, and in a few minutes Davy came, carrying the tea tray, and followed by Rose with the teapot. As soon as they were alone, Florimel began to question Rose; but the girl soon satisfied her that she knew little or nothing.

When Florimel pressed her how she could go she knew not where at the desire of a fellow servant, she gave such confused and apparently contradictory answers, that Florimel began to think ill of both her and Malcolm, and to feel more uncomfortable and indignant; and the more she dwelt upon Malcolm's presumption, and speculated as to his possible design in it, she grew the angrier.

She went again on deck. By this time she was in a passion—little mollified by the sense of her helplessness.

"MacPhail," she said, laying the restraint of dignified utterance upon her words, "I desire you to give me a good reason for your most unaccountable behaviour. Where are you taking me?"

"To Lossie House, my lady."

"Indeed!" she returned with scornful and contemptuous surprise. "Then I order you to change your course at once and return to London."

"I cannot, my lady."

"Cannot! Whose orders but mine are you under, pray?"

"Your father's, my lady."

"I have heard more than enough of that unfortunate—statement, and the measureless assumptions founded on it. I shall heed it no longer."

"I am only doing my best to take care of you, my lady, as I promised him. You will know it one day if you will but trust me."

"I have trusted you ten times too much, and have gained nothing in return but reasons for repenting it. Like all other servants made too much of you have grown insolent. But I shall put a stop to it. I cannot possibly keep you in my service after this. Am I to pay a master where I want a servant?"

Malcolm was silent.

"You must have some reason for this strange conduct," she went on. "How can your supposed duty to my father justify you in treating me with such disrespect. Let me know your reasons. I have a right to know them."

"I will answer you, my lady," said Malcolm. "—Davy, go forward; I will take the helm.—Now, my lady, if you will sit on that cushion.—Rose, bring my lady a fur cloak you will find in the cabin.—Now, my lady, if you will speak low that neither Davy nor Rose shall hear us.—Travers is deaf—I will answer you."

"I ask you," said Florimel, "why you have dared to bring me away like this. Nothing but some danger threatening me could justify it."

"There you say it, my lady."

"And what is the danger, pray?"

'You were going on the continent with Lady Bellair and Lord Liftore —and without me to do as I had promised."

"You insult me!" cried Florimel. "Are my movements to be subject to the approbation of my groom? Is it possible my father could give his henchman such authority over his daughter? I ask you again, where was the danger?"

"In your company, my lady."

"So!" exclaimed Florimel, attempting to rise in sarcasm as she rose in wrath, lest she should fall into undignified rage. "And what may be your objection to my companions?"

"That Lady Bellair is not respected in any circle where her history is known; and that her nephew is a scoundrel."

"It but adds to the wrong you heap on me, that you compel me to hear such wicked abuse of my father's friends," said Florimel, struggling with tears of anger. But for regard to her dignity she would have broken out in fierce and voluble rage.

"If your father knew Lord Liftore as I do, he would be the last man my lord marquis would see in your company."

"Because he gave you a beating, you have no right to slander him," said Florimel spitefully.

Malcolm laughed. He must either laugh or be angry.

"May I ask how your ladyship came to hear of that?"

"He told me himself," she answered.

"Then, my lady, he is a liar, as well as worse. It was I who gave him the drubbing he deserved for his insolence to my—mistress. I am sorry to mention the disagreeable fact, but it is absolutely necessary you should know what sort of man he is."

"And, if there be a lie, which of the two is more likely to tell it?"

"That question is for you, my lady, to answer."

"I never knew a servant who would not tell a lie," said Florimel.

"I was brought up a fisherman," said Malcolm.

"And," Florimel went on, "I have heard my father say no gentleman ever told a lie."

"Then Lord Liftore is no gentleman," said Malcolm. "But I am not going to plead my own cause even to you, my lady. If you can doubt me, do. I have only one thing more to say: that when I told you and my Lady Clementina about the fisher girl and the gentleman—"

"How dare you refer to that again? Even you ought to know there are things a lady cannot hear. It is enough you affronted me with that before Lady Clementina—and after foolish boasts on my part of your good breeding! Now you bring it up again, when I cannot escape your low talk!"

"My lady, I am sorrier than you think; but which is worse—that you should hear such a thing spoken of, or make a friend of the man who did it—and that is Lord Liftore?"

Florimel turned away, and gave her seeming attention to the moonlit waters, sweeping past the swift sailing cutter.

Malcolm's heart ached for her: he thought she was deeply troubled. But she was not half so shocked as he imagined. Infinitely worse would have been the shock to him could he have seen how little the charge against Liftore had touched her. Alas! evil communications had already in no small degree corrupted her good manners. Lady Bellair had uttered no bad words in her hearing: had softened to decency every story that required it; had not unfrequently tacked a worldly wise moral to the end of one; and yet, and yet, such had been the tone of her telling, such the allotment of laughter and lamentation, such the acceptance of things as necessary, and such the repudiation of things as Quixotic, puritanical, impossible, that the girl's natural notions of the lovely and the clean had got dismally shaken and confused.

Happily it was as yet more her judgment than her heart that was perverted. But had she spoken out what was in her thoughts as she looked over the great wallowing water, she would have merely said that for all that Liftore was no worse than other men. They were all the same. It was very unpleasant; but how could a lady help it? If men would behave so, were by nature like that, women must not make themselves miserable about it. They need ask no questions. They were not supposed to be acquainted with the least fragment of the facts, and they must cleave to their ignorance, and lay what blame there might be on the women concerned. The thing was too indecent even to think about.

Ostrich-like they must hide their heads—close their eyes and take the vice in their arms—to love, honour, and obey, as if it were virtue's self, and men as pure as their demands on their wives.

There are thousands that virtually reason thus: Only ignore the thing effectually, and for you it is not. Lie right thoroughly to yourself, and the thing is gone. The lie destroys the fact. So reasoned Lady Macbeth—until conscience at last awoke, and she could no longer keep even the smell of the blood from her. What need Lady Lossie care about the fisher girl, or any other concerned with his past, so long as he behaved like a gentleman to her! Malcolm was a foolish meddling fellow, whose interference was the more troublesome that it was honest

She stood thus gazing on the waters that heaved and swept astern, but without knowing that she saw them, her mind full of such nebulous matter as, condensed, would have made such thoughts as I have set down. And still and ever the water rolled and tossed away behind in the moonlight.

"Oh, my lady!" said Malcolm, "what it would be to have a soul as big and as clean as all this!"

She made no reply, did not turn her head, or acknowledge that she heard him, a few minutes more she stood, then went below in silence, and Malcolm saw no more of her that night.



CHAPTER LII: HOPE CHAPEL

It was Sunday, during which Malcolm lay at the point of death some three stories above his sister's room. There, in the morning, while he was at the worst, she was talking with Clementina, who had called to see whether she would not go and hear the preacher of whom he had spoken with such fervour. Florimel laughed.

"You seem to take everything for gospel Malcolm says, Clementina!"

"Certainly not," returned Clementina, rather annoyed. "Gospel nowadays is what nobody disputes and nobody heeds; but I do heed what Malcolm says, and intend to find out, if I can, whether there is any reality in it. I thought you had a high opinion of your groom!"

"I would take his word for anything a man's word can be taken for," said Florimel.

"But you don't set much store by his judgment?"

"Oh, I daresay he's right. But I don't care for the things you like so much to talk with him about. He's a sort of poet, anyhow, and poets must be absurd. They are always either dreaming or talking about their dreams. They care nothing for the realities of life. No—if you want advice, you must go to your lawyer or clergyman, or some man of common sense, neither groom nor poet."

"Then, Florimel, it comes to this—that this groom of yours is one of the truest of men, and one who possessed your father's confidence, but you are so much his superior that you are capable of judging him, and justified in despising his judgment."

"Only in practical matters, Clementina."

"And duty towards God is with you such a practical matter that you cannot listen to anything he has got to say about it."

Florimel shrugged her shoulders.

"For my part, I would give all I have to know there was a God worth believing in."

"Clementina!"

"What?"

"Of course there is a God. It is very horrible to deny it."

"Which is worse—to deny it, or to deny him? Now, I confess to doubting it—that is, the fact of a God; but you seem to me to deny God himself, for you admit there is a God—think it very wicked to deny that, and yet you don't take interest enough in him to wish to learn anything about him. You won't think, Florimel. I don't fancy you ever really think."

Florimel again laughed.

"I am glad," she said, "that you don't judge me incapable of that high art. But it is not so very long since Malcolm used to hint something much the same about yourself, my lady!"

"Then he was quite right," returned Clementina. "I am only just beginning to think, and if I can find a teacher, here I am, his pupil."

"Well, I suppose I can spare my groom quite enough to teach you all he knows," Florimel said, with what Clementina took for a marked absence of expression. She reddened. But she was not one to defend herself before her principles.

"If he can, why should he not?" she said. "But it was of his friend Mr Graham I was thinking—-not himself."

"You cannot tell whether he has got anything to teach you."

"Your groom's testimony gives likelihood enough to make it my duty to go and see. I intend to find the place this evening."

"It must be some little ranting methodist conventicle. He would not be allowed to preach in a church, you know."

"Of course not! The church of England is like the apostle that forbade the man casting out devils, and got forbid himself for it —with this difference that she won't be forbid. Well, she chooses her portion with Dives and not Lazarus. She is the most arrant respecter of persons I know, and her Christianity is worse than a farce. It was that first of all that drove me to doubt. If I could find a place where everything was just the opposite, the poorer it was the better I should like it. It makes me feel quite wicked to hear a smug parson reading the gold ring and the goodly apparel, while the pew openers beneath are illustrating in dumb show the very thing the apostle is pouring out the vial of his indignation upon over their heads;—doing it calmly and without a suspicion, for the parson, while he reads, is rejoicing in his heart over the increasing aristocracy of his congregation. The farce is fit to make a devil in torment laugh."

Once more, Florimel laughed aloud.

"Another revolution, Clementina, and we shall have you heading the canaille to destroy Westminster Abbey."

"I would follow any leader to destroy falsehood," said Clementina. "No canaille will take that up until it meddles with their stomachs or their pew rents."

"Really, Clementina, you are the worst Jacobin I ever heard talk. My groom is quite an aristocrat beside you."

"Not an atom more than I am. I do acknowledge an aristocracy— but it is one neither of birth nor of intellect nor of wealth."

"What is there besides to make one?"

"Something I hope to find before long. What if there be indeed a kingdom and an aristocracy of life and truth!—Will you or will you not go with me to hear this schoolmaster?"

"I will go anywhere with you, if it were only to be seen with such a beauty," said Florimel, throwing her arms round her neck and kissing her.

Clementina gently returned the embrace, and the thing was settled.

The sound of their wheels, pausing in swift revolution with the clangor of iron hoofs on rough stones at the door of the chapel, refreshed the diaconal heart like the sound of water in the desert. For the first time in the memory of the oldest, the dayspring of success seemed on the point of breaking over Hope Chapel. The ladies were ushered in by Mr Marshal himself, to Clementina's disgust and Florimel's amusement, with much the same attention as his own shop walker would have shown to carriage customers—How could a man who taught light and truth be found in such a mean entourage? But the setting was not the jewel. A real stone might be found in a copper ring. So said Clementina to herself as she sat waiting her hoped for instructor.

Mrs Catanach settled her broad back into its corner, chuckling over her own wisdom and foresight. Her seat was at the pulpit end of the chapel, at right angles to almost all the rest of the pews —chosen because thence, if indeed she could not well see the preacher, she could get a good glimpse of nearly everyone that entered. Keen sighted both physically and intellectually, she recognized Florimel the moment she saw her.

"Twa doos mair to the boody craw!" she laughed to herself. "Ae man thrashin', an' twa birdies pickin'!" she went on, quoting the old nursery nonsense. Then she stooped, and let down her veil. Florimel hated her, and therefore might know her.

"It's the day o' the Lord wi' auld Sanny Grame!" she resumed to herself, as she lifted her head. "He's stickit nae mair, but a chosen trumpet at last! Foul fa' 'im for a wearifu' cratur for a' that! He has nowther balm o' grace nor pith o' damnation.

"Yon laad Flemin', 'at preached i' the Baillies' Barn aboot the dowgs gaein' roon' an' roon' the wa's o' the New Jeroozlem, gien he had but hauden thegither an' no gean to the worms sae sune, wad hae dung a score o' 'im. But Sanny angers me to that degree 'at but for rizons—like yon twa—I wad gang oot i' the mids o' ane o' 's palahvers, an' never come back, though I ha'e a haill quarter o' my sittin' to sit oot yet, an' it cost me dear, an' fits the auld back o' me no that ill."

When Mr Graham rose to read the psalm, great was Clementina's disappointment: he looked altogether, as she thought, of a sort with the place—mean and dreary—of the chapel very chapelly, and she did not believe it could be the man of whom Malcolm had spoken. By a strange coincidence however, a kind of occurrence as frequent as strange, he read for his text that same passage about the gold ring and the vile raiment, in which we learn how exactly the behaviour of the early Jewish churches corresponded to that of the later English ones, and Clementina soon began to alter her involuntary judgment of him when she found herself listening to an utterance beside which her most voluble indignation would have been but as the babble of a child.

Sweeping, incisive, withering, blasting denunciation, logic and poetry combining in one torrent of genuine eloquence, poured confusion and dismay upon head and heart of all who set themselves up for pillars of the church without practising the first principles of the doctrine of Christ—men who, professing to gather their fellows together in the name of Christ, conducted the affairs of the church on the principles of hell—men so blind and dull and slow of heart, that they would never know what the outer darkness meant until it had closed around them—men who paid court to the rich for their money, and to the poor for their numbers—men who sought gain first, safety next, and the will of God not at all —men whose presentation of Christianity was enough to drive the world to a preferable infidelity.

Clementina listened with her very soul. All doubt as to whether this was Malcolm's friend, vanished within two minutes of his commencement. If she rejoiced a little more than was humble or healthful in finding that such a man thought as she thought, she gained this good notwithstanding—the presence and power of a man who believed in righteousness the doctrine he taught. Also she perceived that the principles of equality he held, were founded on the infinite possibilities of the individual—and of the race only through the individual; and that he held these principles with an absoluteness, an earnestness, a simplicity, that dwarfed her loudest objurgation to the uneasy murmuring of a sleeper. She could not but trust him, and her hope grew great that perhaps for her he held the key of the kingdom of heaven. She saw that if what this man said was true, then the gospel was represented by men who knew nothing of its real nature, and by such she bad been led into a false judgment of it.

"If such a man," said the schoolmaster in conclusion, "would but once represent to himself that the man whom he regards as beneath him, may nevertheless be immeasurably above him—and that after no arbitrary judgment, but according to the absolute facts of creation, the scale of the kingdom of God, in which being is rank; if he could persuade himself of the possibility that he may yet have to worship before the feet of those on whom he looks down as on the creatures of another and meaner order of creation, would it not sting him to rise, and, lest this should be one of such, make offer of his chair to the poor man in the vile raiment? Would he ever more, all his life long, dare to say, 'Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool?'"

During the week that followed, Clementina reflected with growing delight on what she had heard, and looked forward to hearing more of a kind correspondent on the approaching Sunday. Nor did the shock of the disappearance of Florimel with Malcolm abate her desire to be taught by Malcolm's friend.

Lady Bellair was astounded, mortified, enraged. Liftore turned grey with passion, then livid with mortification, at the news. Not one of all their circle, as Florimel had herself foreseen, doubted for a moment that she had run away with that groom of hers. Indeed, upon examination, it became evident that the scheme had been for some time in hand: the yacht they had gone on board had been lying there for months; and although she was her own mistress, and might marry whom she pleased, it was no wonder she had run away, for how could she have held her face to it, or up after it?

Lady Clementina accepted the general conclusion, but judged it individually. She had more reason to be distressed at what seemed to have taken place than anyone else; indeed it stung her to the heart, wounding her worse than in its first stunning effects she was able to know; yet she thought better rather than worse of Florimel because of it. What she did not like in her with reference to the affair was the depreciatory manner in which she had always spoken of Malcolm. If genuine, it was quite inconsistent with due regard for the man for whom she was yet prepared to sacrifice so much; if, on the other hand, her slight opinion of his judgment was a pretence, then she had been disloyal to the just prerogatives of friendship.

The latter part of that week was the sorest time Clementina had ever passed. But, like a true woman, she fought her own misery and sense of loss, as well as her annoyance and anxiety,—constantly saying to herself that, be the thing as it might, she could never cease to be glad that she had known Malcolm MacPhail.



CHAPTER LIII: A NEW PUPIL

The sermon Lady Clementina heard with such delight had followed one levelled at the common and right worldly idea of success harboured by each, and unquestioned by one of the chief men of the community: together they caused a strange uncertain sense of discomfort in the mind diaconal. Slow to perceive that that idea, nauseous in his presentment of it, was the very same cherished and justified by themselves; unwilling also to believe that in his denunciation of respecters of persons they themselves had a full share, they yet felt a little uneasy from the vague whispers of their consciences on the side of the neglected principles enounced, clashing with the less vague conviction that if those whispers were encouraged and listened to, the ruin of their hopes for their chapel, and their influence in connection with it, must follow. They eyed each other doubtfully, and there appeared a general tendency amongst them to close pressed lips and single shakes of the head. But there were other forces at work—tending in the same direction.

Whatever may have been the influence of the schoolmaster upon the congregation gathered in Hope Chapel, there was one on whom his converse, supplemented by his preaching, had taken genuine hold. Frederick Marshal had begun to open his eyes to the fact that, regarded as a profession, the ministry, as they called it in their communion, was the meanest way of making a living in the whole creation, one deserving the contempt of every man honest enough to give honourable work, that is, work worth the money, for the money paid him. Also he had a glimmering insight, on the other hand, into the truth of what the dominie said—that it was the noblest of martyrdoms to the man who, sent by God, loved the truth with his whole soul, and was never happier than when bearing witness of it, except, indeed, in those blessed moments when receiving it of the Father. In consequence of this opening of his eyes the youth recoiled with dismay from the sacrilegious mockery of which he had been guilty in meditating the presumption of teaching holy things of which the sole sign that he knew anything was now afforded by this same recoil. At last he was not far from the kingdom of heaven, though whether he was to be sent to persuade men that that kingdom was amongst them, and must be in them, remained a question.

On the morning after the latter of those two sermons, Frederick, as they sat at breakfast, succeeded, with no small effort, for he feared his mother, in blurting out to his father the request that he might be taken into the counting house; and when indignantly requested, over the top of the teapot, to explain himself, declared that he found it impossible to give his mind to a course of education which could only end in the disappointment of his parents, seeing he was at length satisfied that he had no call to the ministry. His father was not displeased at the thought of having him at the shop; but his mother was for some moments speechless with angry tribulation. Recovering herself, with scornful bitterness she requested to know to what tempter he had been giving ear—for tempted he must have been ere son of hers would have been guilty of backsliding from the cause; of taking his hand from the plough and looking behind him. The youth returned such answers as, while they satisfied his father he was right, served only to convince his mother, where yet conviction was hardly needed, that she had to thank the dominie for his defection, his apostasy from the church to the world.

Incapable of perceiving that now first there was hope of a genuine disciple in the child of her affection, she was filled with the gall of disappointment, and with spite against the man who had taught her son how worse than foolish it is to aspire to teach before one has learned; nor did she fail to cast scathing reflections on her husband, in that he had brought home a viper in his bosom, a wolf into his fold, the wretched minion of a worldly church to lead her son away captive at his will; and partly no doubt from his last uncomfortable sermons, but mainly from the play of Mrs Marshal's tongue on her husband's tympanum, the deacons in full conclave agreed that no further renewal of the invitation to preach "for them" should be made to the schoolmaster—just the end of the business Mr Graham had expected, and for which he had provided. On Tuesday morning he smiled to himself, and wondered whether, if he were to preach in his own schoolroom the next Sunday evening, anyone would come to hear him. On Saturday he received a cool letter of thanks for his services, written by the ironmonger in the name of the deacons, enclosing a cheque, tolerably liberal as ideas went, in acknowledgment of them. The cheque Mr Graham returned, saying that, as he was not a preacher by profession, he had no right to take fees. It was a half holiday: he walked up to Hampstead Heath, and was paid for everything, in sky and cloud, fresh air, and a glorious sunset.

When the end of her troubled week came, and the Sunday of her expectation brought lovely weather, with a certain vague suspicion of peace, into the regions of Mayfair and Spitalfields, Clementina walked across the Regent's Park to Hope Chapel, and its morning observances; but thought herself poorly repaid for her exertions by having to listen to a dreadful sermon and worse prayers from Mr Masquar—one of the chief priests of Commonplace—a comfortable idol to serve, seeing he accepts as homage to himself all that any man offers to his own person, opinions, or history. But Clementina contrived to endure it, comforting herself that she had made a mistake in supposing Mr Graham preached in the morning.

In the evening her carriage once again drew up with clang and clatter at the door of the chapel. But her coachman was out of temper at having to leave the bosom of his family circle—as he styled the table that upheld his pot of beer and jar of tobacco—of a Sunday, and sought relief to his feelings in giving his horses a lesson in crawling; the result of which was fortunate for his mistress: when she entered, the obnoxious Mr Masquar was already reading the hymn. She turned at once and made for the door.

But her carriage was already gone. A strange sense of loneliness and desolation seized her. The place had grown hateful to her, and she would have fled from it. Yet she lingered in the porch. The eyes of the man in the pulpit, with his face of false solemnity and low importance—she seemed to feel the look of them on her back, yet she lingered. Now that Malcolm was gone, how was she to learn when Mr Graham would be preaching?

"If you please, ma'am," said a humble and dejected voice.

She turned and saw the seamed and smoky face of the pew opener, who had been watching her from the lobby, and had crept out after her. She dropped a courtesy, and went on hurriedly, with an anxious look now and then over her shoulder—"Oh, ma'am! we shan't see 'im no more. Our people here—they're very good people, but they don't like to be told the truth. It seems to me as if they knowed it so well they thought as how there was no need for them to mind it."

"You don't mean that Mr Graham has given up preaching here?"

"They've given up askin' of 'im to preach, lady. But if ever there was a good man in that pulpit, Mr Graham he do be that man!"

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Yes, ma'am; but it would be hard to direct you." Here she looked in at the door of the chapel with a curious half frightened glance, as if to satisfy herself that the inner door was closed. "But," she went on, "they won't miss me now the service is begun, and I can be back before it's over. I'll show you where, ma'am."

"I should be greatly obliged to you," said Clementina, "only I am sorry to give you the trouble."

"To tell the truth, I'm only too glad to get away," she returned, "for the place it do look like a cementery, now he's out of it."

"Was he so kind to you?"

"He never spoke word to me, as to myself like, no, nor never gave me sixpence, like Mr Masquar do; but he give me strength in my heart to bear up, and that's better than meat or money."

It was a good half hour's walk, and during it Clementina held what conversation she might with her companion. It was not much the woman had to say of a general sort. She knew little beyond her own troubles and the help that met them, but what else are the two main forces whose composition results in upward motion? Her world was very limited—the houses in which she went charing, the chapel she swept and dusted, the neighbours with whom she gossipped, the little shops where she bought the barest needs of her bare life; but it was at least large enough to leave behind her; and if she was not one to take the kingdom of heaven by force, she was yet one to creep quietly into it. The earthly life of such as she— immeasurably less sordid than that of the poet who will not work for his daily bread, or that of the speculator who, having settled money on his wife, risks that of his neighbour—passing away like a cloud, will hang in their west, stained indeed, but with gold, blotted, but with roses. Dull as it all was now, Clementina yet gained from her unfoldings a new outlook upon life, its needs, its sorrows, its consolations, and its hopes; nor was there any vulgar pity in the smile of the one, or of degrading acknowledgment in the tears of the other, when a piece of gold passed from hand to hand, as they parted.

The Sunday sealed door of the stationer's shop—for there was no private entrance to the house—was opened by another sad faced woman. What a place to seek the secret of life in! Lovelily enfolds the husk its kernel; but what the human eye turns from as squalid and unclean may enfold the seed that clasps, couched in infinite withdrawment, the vital germ of all that is lovely and graceful, harmonious and strong, all without which no poet would sing, no martyr burn, no king rule in righteousness, no geometrician pore over the marvellous must.

The woman led her through the counter into a little dingy room behind the shop, looking out on a yard a few feet square, with a water butt, half a dozen flower pots, and a maimed plaster Cupid perched on the windowsill. There sat the schoolmaster, in conversation with a lady, whom the woman of the house, awed by her sternness and grandeur, had, out of regard to her lodger's feelings, shown into her parlour and not into his bedroom.

Cherishing the hope that the patent consequences of his line of action might have already taught him moderation, Mrs Marshal, instead of going to chapel to hear Mr Masquar, had paid Mr Graham a visit, with the object of enlisting his sympathies if she could, at all events his services, in the combating of the scruples he had himself aroused in the bosom of her son. What had passed between them I do not care to record, but when Lady Clementina—unannounced of the landlady—entered, there was light enough, notwithstanding the non reflective properties of the water butt, to reveal Mrs Marshal flushed and flashing, Mr Graham grave and luminous, and to enable the chapel business eye of Mrs Marshal, which saw every stranger that entered "Hope," at once to recognise her as having made one of the congregation the last Sunday evening.

Evidently one of Mr Graham's party, she was not prejudiced in her favour. But there was that in her manner which impressed her— that something ethereal and indescribable which she herself was constantly aping, and, almost involuntarily, she took upon herself such honours as the place, despicable in her eyes, would admit of. She rose, made a sweeping courtesy, and addressed Lady Clementina with such a manner as people of Mrs Marshal's ambitions put off and on like their clothes.

"Pray, take a seat, ma'am, such as it is," she said, with a wave of her hand. "I believe I have had the pleasure of seeing you at our place."

Lady Clementina sat down: the room was too small to stand in, and Mrs Marshal seemed to take the half of it.

"I am not aware of the honour," she returned, doubtful what the woman meant—perhaps some shop or dressmaker's. Clementina was not one who delighted in freezing her humbler fellow creatures, as we know; but there was something altogether repulsive in the would be grand but really arrogant behaviour of her fellow visitor.

"I mean," said Mrs Marshal, a little abashed, for ambition is not strength, "at our little Bethel in Kentish Town! Not that we live there!" she explained with a superior smile.

"Oh! I think I understand. You must mean the chapel where this gentleman was preaching."

"That is my meaning," assented Mrs Marshal.

"I went there tonight," said Clementina, turning with some timidity to Mr Graham. "That I did not find you there, sir, will, I hope, explain—"Here she paused, and turned again to Mrs Marshal. "I see you think with me, ma'am, that a true teacher is worth following."

As she said this she turned once more to Mr Graham, who sat listening with a queer, amused, but right courteous smile.

"I hope you will pardon me," she continued, "for venturing to call upon you, and, as I have the misfortune to find you occupied, allow me to call another day. If you would set me a time, I should be more obliged than I can tell you," she concluded, her voice trembling a little.

"Stay now, if you will, madam," returned the schoolmaster, with a bow of oldest fashioned courtesy. "This lady has done laying her commands upon me, I believe."

"As you think proper to call them commands, Mr Graham, I conclude you intend to obey them," said Mrs Marshal, with a forced smile and an attempt at pleasantry.

"Not for the world, madam," he answered. "Your son is acting the part of a gentleman—yes, I make bold to say, of one who is very nigh the kingdom of heaven, if not indeed within its gate, and before I would check him I would be burnt at the stake—even were your displeasure the fire, madam," he added, with a kindly bow. "Your son is a line fellow."

"He would be, if he were left to himself. Good evening, Mr Graham. Goodbye, rather, for I think we are not likely to meet again."

"In heaven, I hope, madam; for by that time we shall be able to understand each other," said the schoolmaster, still kindly.

Mrs Marshal made no answer beyond a facial flash as she turned to Clementina.

"Good evening, ma'am," she said. "To pay court to the earthen vessel because of the treasure it may happen to hold, is to be a respecter of persons as bad as any."

An answering flash broke from Clementina's blue orbs, but her speech was more than calm as she returned,

"I learned something of that lesson last Sunday evening, I hope, ma'am. But you have left me far behind, for you seem to have learned disrespect even to the worthiest of persons. Good evening, ma'am."

She looked the angry matron full in the face, with an icy regard, from which, as from the Gorgon eye, she fled.

The victor turned to the schoolmaster.

"I beg your pardon, sir," she said, "for presuming to take your part, but a gentleman is helpless with a vulgar woman."

"I thank you, madam. I hope the sharpness of your rebuke—but indeed the poor woman can hardly help her rudeness, for she is very worldly, and believes herself very pious. It is the old story— hard for the rich."

Clementina was struck.

"I too am rich and worldly," she said. "But I know that I am not pious, and if you would but satisfy me that religion is common sense, I would try to be religious with all my heart and soul."

"I willingly undertake the task. But let us know each other a little first. And lest I should afterwards seem to have taken an advantage of you, I hope you have no wish to be nameless to me, for my friend Malcolm MacPhail had so described you that I recognized your ladyship at once."

Clementina said that, on the contrary, she had given her name to the woman who opened the door.

"It is because of what Malcolm said of you that I ventured to come to you," she added.

"Have you seen Malcolm lately?" he asked, his brow clouding a little. "It is more than a week since he has been to me."

Thereupon, with embarrassment, such as she would never have felt except in the presence of pure simplicity, she told of his disappearance with his mistress.

"And you think they have run away together?" said the schoolmaster, his face beaming with what, to Clementina's surprise, looked almost like merriment.

"Yes, I think so," she answered. "Why not, if they choose?"

"I will say this for my friend Malcolm," returned Mr Graham composedly, "that whatever he did I should expect to find not only all right in intention, but prudent and well devised also. The present may well seem a rash, ill considered affair for both of them, but—"

"I see no necessity either for explanation or excuse," said Clementina, too eager to mark that she interrupted Mr Graham. "In making up her mind to marry him, Lady Lossie has shown greater wisdom and courage than, I confess, I had given her credit for."

"And Malcolm?" rejoined the schoolmaster softly. "Should you say of him that he showed equal wisdom?"

"I decline to give an opinion upon the gentleman's part in the business," answered Clementina, laughing, but glad there was so little light in the room, for she was painfully conscious of the burning of her cheeks. "Besides, I have no measure to apply to Malcolm," she went on, a little hurriedly. "He is like no one else I have ever talked with, and I confess there is something about him I cannot understand. Indeed, he is beyond me altogether."

"Perhaps, having known him from infancy, I might be able to explain him," returned Mr Graham, in a tone that invited questioning.

"Perhaps, then," said Clementina, "I may be permitted, in jealousy for the teaching I have received of him, to confess my bewilderment that one so young should be capable of dealing with such things as he delights in. The youth of the prophet makes me doubt his prophecy."

"At least," rejoined Mr Graham, "the phenomenon coincides with what the master of these things said of them—that they were revealed to babes and not to the wise and prudent. As to Malcolm's wonderful facility in giving them form and utterance, that depends so immediately on the clear sight of them, that, granted a little of the gift poetic, developed through reading and talk, we need not wonder much at it."

"You consider your friend a genius?" suggested Clementina.

"I consider him possessed of a kind of heavenly common sense, equally at home in the truths of divine relation, and the facts of the human struggle with nature and her forces. I should never have discovered my own ignorance in certain points of the mathematics but for the questions that boy put to me before he was twelve years of age. A thing not understood lay in his mind like a fretting foreign body. But there is a far more important factor concerned than this exceptional degree of insight. Understanding is the reward of obedience. Peter says 'the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given them that obey him.' Obedience is the key to every door. I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters, he will talk, and speculate, and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do. It is different with Malcolm. From the first he has been trying to obey. Nor do I see why it should be strange that even a child should understand these things, if they are the very elements of the region for which we were created and to which our being holds essential relations, as a bird to the air, or a fish to the sea. If a man may not understand the things of God whence he came, what shall he understand?"

"How, then, is it that so few do understand?"

"Because where they know, so few obey. This boy, I say, did. If you had seen, as I have, the almost superhuman struggles of his will to master the fierce temper his ancestors gave him, you would marvel less at what he has so early become. I have seen him, white with passion, cast himself on his face on the shore, and cling with his hands to the earth as if in a paroxysm of bodily suffering; then after a few moments rise and do a service to the man who had wronged him. Were it any wonder if the light should have soon gone up in a soul like that? When I was a younger man I used to go out with the fishing boats now and then, drawn chiefly by my love for the boy, who earned his own bread that way before he was in his teens. One night we were caught in a terrible storm, and had to stand out to sea in the pitch dark. He was then not fourteen. 'Can you let a boy like that steer?' I said to the captain of the boat. 'Yes; just a boy like that,' he answered. 'Ma'colm 'ill steer as straucht's a porpus.' When he was relieved, he crept over the thwarts to where I sat. 'Is there any true definition of a straight line, sir?' he said. 'I can't take the one in my Euclid.'—'So you're not afraid, Malcolm?' I returned, heedless of his question, for I wanted to see what he would answer. 'Afraid, sir!' he rejoined with some surprise, 'I wad ill like to hear the Lord say, O thou o' little faith!'—'But,' I persisted, 'God may mean to drown you!'—'An' what for no?' he returned. 'Gien ye war to tell me 'at I micht be droon't ohn him meant it, I wad be fleyt eneuch.' I see your ladyship does not understand: I will interpret the dark saying: 'And why should he not drown me? If you were to tell me I might be drowned without his meaning it, I should be frightened enough.' Believe me, my lady, the right way is simple to find, though only they that seek it first can find it. But I have allowed myself," concluded the schoolmaster, "to be carried adrift in my laudation of Malcolm. You did not come to hear praises of him, my lady."

"I owe him much," said Clementina. "—But tell me then, Mr Graham, how is it that you know there is a God, and one—one—fit to be trusted as you trust him?"

"In no way that I can bring to bear on the reason of another so as to produce conviction."

"Then what is to become of me?"

"I can do for you what is far better. I can persuade you to look and see whether before your own door stands not a gate—lies not a path to walk in. Entering by that gate, walking in that path, you shall yourself arrive at the conviction, which no man can give you, that there is a living Love and Truth at the heart of your being, and pervading all that surrounds you. The man who seeks the truth in any other manner will never find it. Listen to me a moment, my lady. I loved that boy's mother. Naturally she did not love me—how could she? I was very unhappy. I sought comfort from the unknown source of my life. He gave me to understand his Son, and so I understood himself, knew that I came of God, and was comforted."

"But how do you know that it was not all a delusion—the product of your own fervid imagination? Do not mistake me; I want to find it true."

"It is a right and honest question, my lady. I will tell you.

"Not to mention the conviction which a truth beheld must carry with itself and concerning which there can be no argument either with him who does or him who does not see it, this experience goes far with me, and would with you if you had it, as you may—namely, that all my difficulties and confusions have gone on clearing themselves up ever since I set out to walk in that way. My consciousness of life is threefold what it was; my perception of what is lovely around me, and my delight in it, threefold; my power of understanding things and of ordering my way, threefold also; the same with my hope and my courage, my love to my kind, my power of forgiveness. In short, I cannot but believe that my whole being and its whole world are in process of rectification for me. Is not that something to set against the doubt born of the eye and ear, and the questions of an intellect that can neither grasp nor disprove? I say nothing of better things still. To the man who receives such as I mean, they are the heart of life; to the man who does not, they exist not. But I say—if I thus find my whole being enlightened and redeemed, and know that therein I fare according to the word of the man of whom the old story tells: if I find that his word, and the result of action founded upon that word, correspond and agree, opening a heaven within and beyond me, in which I see myself delivered from all that now in myself is to myself despicable and unlovely; if I can reasonably—reasonably to myself not to another —cherish hopes of a glory of conscious being, divinely better than all my imagination when most daring could invent—a glory springing from absolute unity with my creator, and therefore with my neighbour; if the Lord of the ancient tale, I say, has thus held word with me, am I likely to doubt much or long whether there be such a lord or no?"

"What, then, is the way that lies before my own door? Help me to see it."

"It is just the old way—as old as the conscience—that of obedience to any and every law of personal duty. But if you have ever seen the Lord, if only from afar—if you have any vaguest suspicion that the Jew Jesus, who professed to have come from God, was a better man than other men, one of your first duties must be to open your ears to his words, and see whether they commend themselves to you as true; then, if they do, to obey them with your whole strength and might, upheld by the hope of the vision promised in them to the obedient. This is the way of life, which will lead a man out of the miseries of the nineteenth century, as it led Paul out of the miseries of the first."

There followed a little pause, and then a long talk about what the schoolmaster had called the old story; in which he spoke with such fervid delight of this and that point in the tale; removing this and that stumbling-block by giving the true reading—or the right interpretation; showing the what and why and how—the very intent of our Lord in the thing he said or did, that, for the first time in her life, Clementina began to feel as if such a man must really have lived, that his blessed feet must really have walked over the acres of Palestine, that his human heart must indeed have thought and felt, worshipped and borne, right humanly. Even in the presence of her new teacher, and with his words in her ears, she began to desire her own chamber that she might sit down with the neglected story and read for herself.

The schoolmaster walked with her to the chapel door. There her carriage was already waiting. He put her in, and, while the Reverend Jacob Masquar was still holding forth upon the difference between adoption and justification, Clementina drove away, never more to delight the hearts of the deacons with the noise of the hoofs of her horses, staying the wheels of her yellow chariot.



CHAPTER LIV: THE FEY FACTOR

When Mr Crathie heard of the outrage the people of Scaurnose had committed upon the surveyors, he vowed be would empty every house in the place at Michaelmas. His wife warned him that such a wholesale proceeding must put him in the wrong with the country, seeing they could not all have been guilty. He replied it would be impossible, the rascals hung so together, to find out the ringleaders even. She returned that they all deserved it, and that a correct discrimination was of no consequence; it would be enough to the purpose if he made a difference. People would then say he had done his best to distinguish. The factor was persuaded and made out a list of those who were to leave, in which he took care to include all the principal men, to whom he gave warning forthwith to quit their houses at Michaelmas. I do not know whether the notice was in law sufficient, but exception was not taken on that score.

Scaurnose, on the receipt of the papers, all at the same time, by the hand of the bellman of Portlossie, was like a hive about to swarm. Endless and complicated were the comings and goings between the houses, the dialogues, confabulations, and consultations, in the one street and its many closes. In the middle of it, in front of the little public house, stood, all that day and the next, a group of men and women, for no five minutes in its component parts the same, but, like a cloud, ever slow dissolving, and as continuously reforming, some dropping away, others falling to. Such nid nodding, such uplifting and fanning of palms among the women, such semi-revolving side shakes of the head, such demonstration of fists, and such cursing among the men, had never before been seen and heard in Scaurnose. The result was a conclusion to make common cause with the first victim of the factor's tyranny, namely Blue Peter, whose expulsion would arrive three months before theirs, and was unquestionably head and front of the same cruel scheme for putting down the fisher folk altogether.

Three of them, therefore, repaired to Joseph's house, commissioned with the following proposal and condition of compact: that Joseph should defy the notice given him to quit, they pledging themselves that he should not be expelled. Whether he agreed or not, they were equally determined, they said, when their turn came, to defend the village; but if he would cast in his lot with them, they would, in defending him, gain the advantage of having the question settled three months sooner for themselves. Blue Peter sought to dissuade them, specially insisting on the danger of bloodshed. They laughed. They had anticipated objection, but being of the youngest and roughest in the place, the idea of a scrimmage was, neither in itself nor in its probable consequences, at all repulsive to them. They answered that a little blood letting would do nobody any harm, neither would there be much of that, for they scorned to use any weapon sharper than their fists or a good thick rung: the women and children would take stones of course. Nobody would be killed, but every meddlesome authority taught to let Scaurnose and fishers alone. Peter objected that their enemies could easily starve them out. Dubs rejoined that, if they took care to keep the sea door open, their friends at Portlossie would not let them starve. Grosert said he made no doubt the factor would have the Seaton to fight as well as Scaurnose, for they must see plainly enough that their turn would come next. Joseph said the factor would apply to the magistrates, and they would call out the militia.

"An' we'll call out Buckie," answered Dubs.

"Man," said Fite Folp, the eldest of the three, "the haill shore, frae the Brough to Fort George, 'll be up in a jiffie, an' a' the cuintry, frae John o' Groat's to Berwick, 'ill hear hoo the fisher fowk 's misguidit; an' at last it'll come to the king, an' syne we'll get oor richts, for he'll no stan' to see't, an' maitters 'll sane be set upon a better futtin' for puir fowk 'at has no freen' but God an' the sea."

The greatness of the result represented laid hold of Peter's imagination, and the resistance to injustice necessary to reach it stirred the old tar in him. When they took their leave, he walked halfway up the street with them, and then returned to tell his wife what they had been saying, all the way murmuring to himself as he went, "The Lord is a man of war." And ever as he said the words, he saw as in a vision the great man of war in which he had served, sweeping across the bows of a Frenchman, and raking him, gun after gun, from stem to stern. Nor did the warlike mood abate until he reached home and looked his wife in the eyes. He told her all, ending with the half repudiatory, half tentative words.

"That's what they say, ye see, Annie."

"And what say ye, Joseph?" returned his wife.

"Ow! I'm no sayin'," he answered.

"What are ye thinkin' than, Joseph?" she pursued. "Ye canna say ye're no thinkin'."

"Na; I'll no say that, lass," he replied, but said no more.

"Weel, gien ye winna say," resumed Annie, "I wull; an' my say is, 'at it luiks to me unco like takin' things intil yer ain han'."

"An' whase han' sud we tak them intil but oor ain?" said Peter, with a falseness which in another would have roused his righteous indignation.

"That's no the p'int. It's whase han' ye're takin' them oot o'," returned she, and spoke with solemnity and significance.

Peter made no answer, but the words Vengeance is mine began to ring in his mental ears instead of The Lord is a man of war.

Before Mr Graham left them, and while Peter's soul was flourishing, he would have simply said that it was their part to endure, and leave the rest to the God of the sparrows.. But now the words of men whose judgment had no weight with him, threw him back upon the instinct of self defence—driven from which by the words of his wife, he betook himself, not alas! to the protection, but to the vengeance of the Lord!

The next day he told the three commissioners that he was sorry to disappoint them, but he could not make common cause with them, for he could not see it his duty to resist, much as it would gratify the natural man. They must therefore excuse him if he left Scaurnose at the time appointed. He hoped he should leave friends behind him.

They listened respectfully, showed no offence, and did not even attempt to argue the matter with him. But certain looks passed between them.

After this Blue Peter was a little happier in his mind, and went more briskly about his affairs.



CHAPTER LV: THE WANDERER

It was a lovely summer evening, and the sun, going down just beyond the point of the Scaurnose, shone straight upon the Partan's door. That it was closed in such weather had a significance—general as well as individual. Doors were oftener closed in the Seaton now. The spiritual atmosphere of the place was less clear and open than hitherto. The behaviour of the factor, the trouble of their neighbours, the conviction that the man who depopulated Scaurnose would at least raise the rents upon them, had brought a cloud over the feelings and prospects of its inhabitants—which their special quarrel with the oppressor for Malcolm's sake, had drawn deeper around the Findlays; and hence it was that the setting sun shone upon the closed door of their cottage.

But a shadow darkened it, cutting off the level stream of rosy red. An aged man, in Highland garments, stood and knocked. His overworn dress looked fresher and brighter in the friendly rays, but they shone very yellow on the bare hollows of his old knees. It was Duncan MacPhail, the supposed grandfather of Malcolm. He was older and feebler, I had almost said blinder, but that could not be, certainly shabbier than ever. The glitter of dirk and broadsword at his sides, and the many coloured ribbons adorning the old bagpipes under his arms, somehow enhanced the look of more than autumnal, of wintry desolation in his appearance.