The Marquis of Lossie, George MacDonald [freda ebook reader .TXT] 📗

he found all tidy and shipshape He dived into the cabin, lighted a candle, and made some measurements: all the little luxuries of the nest, carpets, cushions, curtains, and other things, were at Lossie House, having been removed when the Psyche was laid up for the winter: he was going to replace them. And he was anxious to see whether be could not fulfil a desire he had once heard Florimel express to her father-that she had a bed on board, and could sleep there. He found it possible, and had soon contrived a berth: even a tiny stateroom was within the limits of construction.

Returning to the deck, he was consulting Travers about a carpenter, when, to his astonishment, he saw young Davy, the boy he had brought from Duff Harbour, and whom he understood to have gone back with Blue Peter, gazing at him from before the mast.

"Gien ye please, Maister MacPhail," said Davy, and said no more.

"How on earth do you come to be here, you rascal?" said Malcolm. "Peter was to take you home with him!"

"I garred him think I was gauin'," answered the boy, scratching his red poll, which glowed in the dusk.

"I gave him your wages," said Malcolm.

"Ay, he tauld me that, but I loot them gang an' gae him the slip, an' was ashore close ahint yersel', sir, jist as the smack set sail. I cudna gang ohn hed a word wi' yersel', sir, to see whether ye wadna lat me bide wi' ye, sir. I haena muckle wut, they tell me, sir, but gien I michtna aye be able to du what ye tell't me to du, I cud aye haud ohn dune what ye tell't me no to."

The words of the boy pleased Malcolm more than he judged it wise to manifest. He looked hard at Davy. There was little to be seen in his face except the best and only thing-truth. It shone from his round pale blue eyes; it conquered the self assertion of his unhappy nose; it seemed to glow in every freckle of his sunburnt cheeks, as earnestly he returned Malcolm's gaze.

"But," said Malcolm, almost satisfied, "how is this, Travers? I never gave you any instructions about the boy."

"There's where it is, sir," answered Travers. "I seed the boy aboard before, and when he come aboard again, jest arter you left, I never as much as said to myself, It's all right. I axed him no questions, and he told me no lies."

"Gien ye please, sir," struck in Davy, "Maister Trahvers gied me my mait, an' I tuik it, 'cause I hed no sil'er to buy ony: I houp it wasna stealin', sir. An' gien ye wad keep me, ye cud tak it aft o' my wauges for three days."

"Look here, Davy," said Malcolm, turning sharp upon him, "can you swim?"

"Ay can I, sir,-weel that," answered Davy.

"Jump overboard then, and swim ashore," said Malcolm, pointing to the Chelsea bank.

The boy made two strides to the larboard gunwale, and would have been over the next instant, but Malcolm caught him by the shoulder.

"That'll do, Davy; I'll give you a chance, Davy," he said, "and if I get a good account of you from Travers, I'll rig you out like myself here."

"Thank you, sir," said Davy. "I s' du what I can to please ye, sir. An' gien ye wad sen' my wauges hame to my mither, sir, ye wad ken 'at I cudna be gauin' stravaguin', and drinkin' whan yer back was turn't."

"Well, I'll write to your mother, and see what she says," said Malcolm. "Now I want to tell you, both of you, that this yacht belongs to the Marchioness of Lossie, and I have the command of her, and I must have everything on board shipshape, and as clean, Travers, as if she were a seventy-four. If there's the head of a pail visible, it must be as bright as silver. And everything must be at the word. The least hesitation, and I have done with that man. If Davy here had grumbled one mouthful, even on his way overboard, I wouldn't have kept him."

He then arranged that Travers was to go home that night, and bring with him the next morning an old carpenter friend of his. He would himself be down by seven o'clock to set him to work.

The result was that, before a fortnight was over, he had the cabin thoroughly fitted up, with all the luxuries it had formerly possessed, and as many more as he could think of-to compensate for the loss of the space occupied by the daintiest little stateroom -a very jewel box for softness and richness and comfort. In the cabin, amongst the rest of his additions, he had fixed in a corner a set of tiny bookshelves, and filled them with what books he knew his sister liked, and some that he liked for her. It was not probable she would read in them much, he said to himself, but they wouldn't make the boat heel, and who could tell when a drop of celestial nepenthe might ooze from one or another of them! So there they stood, in their lovely colours, of morocco, russia, calf or vellum -types of the infinite rest in the midst of the ever restless- the types for ever tossed, but the rest remaining.

By that time also he had arranged with Travers and Davy a code of signals.

The day after Malcolm had his new hack, he rode him behind his mistress in the park, and nothing could be more decorous than the behaviour of both horse and groom. It was early, and in Rotten Row, to his delight, they met the lady of rebuke. She and Florimel pulled up simultaneously, greeted, and had a little talk. When they parted, and the lady came to pass Malcolm, whom she had not suspected, sitting a civilised horse in all serenity behind his mistress, she cast a quick second glance at him, and her fair face flushed with the red reflex of yesterday's anger. He expected her to turn at once and complain of him to her mistress, but to his disappointment, she rode on.

When they left the park, Florimel went down Constitution Hill, and turning westward, rode to Chelsea. As they approached Mr Lenorme's house, she stopped and said to Malcolm-"I am going to run in and thank Mr Lenorme for the trouble he has been at about the horse. Which is the house?"

She pulled up at the gate. Malcolm dismounted, but before he could get near to assist her, she was already halfway up the walk- flying, and he was but in time to catch the rein of Abbot, already moving off curious to know whether he was actually trusted alone. In about five minutes she came again, glancing about her all ways but behind, with a scared look, Malcolm thought. But she walked more slowly and statelily than usual down the path. In a moment Malcolm had her in the saddle, and she cantered away-past the hospital into Sloane Street, and across the park home. He said to himself, "She knows the way."


CHAPTER XXVI: THE SCHOOLMASTER


Alexander Graham, the schoolmaster, was the son of a grieve, or farm overseer, in the North of Scotland. By straining every nerve, his parents had succeeded in giving him a university education, the narrowness of whose scope was possibly favourable to the development of what genius, rare and shy, might lurk among the students. He had laboured well, and had gathered a good deal from books and lectures, but far more from the mines they guided him to discover in his own nature. In common with so many Scotch parents, his had cherished the most wretched as well as hopeless of all ambitions, seeing it presumes to work in a region into which no ambition can enter-I mean that of seeing their son a clergyman. In presbyter, curate, bishop, or cardinal, ambition can fare but as that of the creeping thing to build its nest in the topmost boughs of the cedar. Worse than that; my simile is a poor one; for the moment a thought of ambition is cherished, that moment the man is out of the kingdom. Their son with already a few glimmering insights, which had not yet begun to interfere with his acceptance of the doctrines of his church, made no opposition to their wish, but having qualified himself to the satisfaction of his superiors, at length ascended the pulpit to preach his first sermon.

The custom of the time as to preaching was a sort of compromise between reading a sermon and speaking extempore, a mode morally as well as artistically false: the preacher learned his sermon by rote, and repeated it-as much like the man he therein was not, and as little like the parrot he was, as he could. It is no wonder, in such an attempt, either that memory should fail a shy man, or assurance an honest man. In Mr Graham's case it was probably the former: the practice was universal, and he could hardly yet have begun to question it, so as to have had any conscience of evil. Blessedly, however, for his dawning truth and well being, he failed -failed utterly-pitifully. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; his lips moved, but shaped no sound; a deathly dew bathed his forehead; his knees shook; and he sank at last to the bottom of the chamber of his torture, whence, while his mother wept below, and his father clenched hands of despair beneath the tails of his Sunday coat, he was half led, half dragged down the steps by the bedral, shrunken together like one caught in a shameful deed, and with the ghastly look of him who has but just revived from the faint supervening on the agonies of the rack. Home they crept together, speechless and hopeless all three, to be thenceforth the contempt and not the envy of their fellow parishioners. For if the vulgar feeling towards the home born prophet is superciliousness, what must the sentence upon failure be in ungenerous natures, to which every downfall of another is an uplifting of themselves! But Mr Graham's worth had gained him friends in the presbytery, and he was that same week appointed to the vacant school of another parish.

There it was not long before he made the acquaintance of Griselda Campbell, who was governess in the great house of the neighbourhood, and a love, not the less fine that it was hopeless from the first, soon began to consume the chagrin of his failure, and substitute for it a more elevating sorrow;-for how could an embodied failure, to offer whose miserable self would be an insult, dare speak of love to one before whom his whole being sank worshipping. Silence was the sole armour of his privilege. So long as he was silent, the terrible arrow would never part from the bow of those sweet lips; he might love on, love ever, nor be grudged the bliss of such visions as to him, seated on its outer steps, might come from any chance opening of the heavenly gate. And Miss Campbell thought of him more kindly than he knew. But before long she accepted the offered situation of governess to Lady Annabel, the only child of the late marquis's elder brother, at that time himself marquis, and removed to Lossie House. There the late marquis fell in love with her, and persuaded her to a secret marriage. There also she became, in the absence of her husband, the mother of Malcolm. But the marquis of the time, jealous