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

the knight, that it was the first time he had stood up to speak in public since his failure thirty years ago. That hour again for a moment overshadowed his spirit. It was a wavy harvest morning in a village of the north. A golden wind was blowing, and little white clouds flying aloft in the sunny blue. The church was full of well known faces, upturned, listening, expectant, critical. The hour vanished in a slow mist of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over all dead hopes, and write Te Deums on their coffin lids? And now he stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon prayed his; but there had come to him no reviving-no message for this handful of dull souls-there were nine of them in all -and his own soul crouched hard and dull within his bosom. How to give them one deeper breath? How to make them know they were alive? Whence was his aid to come?

His aid was nearer than he knew. There were no hills to which he could lift his eyes, but help may hide in the valley as well as come down from the mountain, and he found his under the coal scuttle bonnet of the woman that swept out and dusted the chapel. She was no interesting young widow. A life of labour and vanished children lay behind as well as before her. She was sixty years of age, seamed with the smallpox, and in every seam the dust and smoke of London had left a stain. She had a troubled eye, and a gaze that seemed to ask of the universe why it had given birth to her. But it was only her face that asked the question; her mind was too busy with the ever recurring enigma, which, answered this week, was still an enigma for the next-how she was to pay her rent-too busy to have any other question to ask. Or would she not rather have gone to sleep altogether, under the dreary fascination of the slug monster, had she not had a severe landlady, who would be paid punctually, or turn her out? Anyhow, every time and all the time she sat in the chapel, she was brooding over ways and means, calculating pence and shillings-the day's charing she had promised her, and the chances of more-mingling faint regrets over past indulgences -the extra half pint of beer she drank on Saturday-the bit of cheese she bought on Monday. Of this face of care, revealing a spirit which Satan had bound, the schoolmaster caught sight,- caught from its commonness, its grimness, its defeature, inspiration and uplifting, for there he beheld the oppressed, down trodden, mire fouled humanity which the man in whom he believed had loved because it was his father's humanity divided into brothers, and had died straining to lift back to the bosom of that Father. Oh tale of horror and dreary monstrosity, if it be such indeed as the bulk of its priests on the one hand, and its enemies on the other represent it! Oh story of splendrous fate, of infinite resurrection and uplifting, of sun and breeze, of organ blasts and exultation, for the heart of every man and woman, whatsoever the bitterness of its care or the weight of its care, if it be such as the Book itself has held it from age to age!

It was the mere humanity of the woman, I say, and nothing in her individuality of what is commonly called the interesting, that ministered to the breaking of the schoolmaster's trance. "Oh ye of little faith!" were the first words that flew from his lips-he knew not whether uttered concerning himself or the charwoman the more; and at once he fell to speaking of him who said the words, and of the people that came to him and heard him gladly;-how this one, whom he described, must have felt, Oh, if that be true! how that one, whom also he described, must have said, Now he means me! and so laid bare the secrets of many hearts, until he had concluded all in the misery of being without a helper in the world, a prey to fear and selfishness and dismay. Then he told them how the Lord pledged himself for all their needs-meat and drink and clothes for the body, and God and love and truth for the soul, if only they would put them in the right order and seek the best first.

Next he spoke a parable to them-of a house and a father and his children. The children would not do what their father told them, and therefore began to keep out of his sight. After a while they began to say to each other that he must have gone out, it was so long since they had seen him-only they never went to look. And again after a time some of them began to say to each other that they did not believe they had ever had any father. But there were some who dared not say that-who thought they had a father somewhere in the house, and yet crept about in misery, sometimes hungry and often cold, fancying he was not friendly to them, when all the time it was they who were not friendly to him, and said to themselves he would not give them anything. They never went to knock at his door, or call to know if he were inside and would speak to them. And all the time there he was sitting sorrowful, listening and listening for some little hand to come knocking, and some little voice to come gently calling through the keyhole; for sorely did he long to take them to his bosom and give them everything. Only if he did that without their coming to him, they would not care for his love or him, would only care for the things he gave them, and soon would come to hate their brothers and sisters, and turn their own souls into hells, and the earth into a charnel of murder.

Ere he ended he was pleading with the charwoman to seek her father in his own room, tell him her troubles, do what he told her, and fear nothing. And while he spoke, lo! the dragon slug had vanished; the ugly chapel was no longer the den of the hideous monster; it was but the dusky bottom of a glory shaft, adown which gazed the stars of the coming resurrection.

"The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us," said the preacher, and sat down.

A prayer from the greengrocer followed, in which he did seem to be feeling after God a little; and then the ironmonger pronounced the benediction, and all went-among the rest, Frederick Marshal, who had followed the schoolmaster, and now walked back with him to his father's, where he was to spend one night more.


CHAPTER XXVIII: THE PORTRAIT


Florimel had found her daring visit to Lenorme stranger and more fearful than she had expected: her courage was not quite so masterful as she had thought. The next day she got Mrs Barnardiston to meet her at the studio.-But she contrived to be there first by some minutes, and her friend found her seated, and the painter looking as if he had fairly begun his morning's work. When she apologised for being late, Florimel said she supposed her groom had brought round the horses before his time; being ready, she had not looked at her watch. She was sharp on other people for telling stories -but had of late ceased to see any great harm in telling one to protect herself. The fact however had begun to present itself in those awful morning hours that seem a mingling of time and eternity, and she did not like the discovery that, since her intimacy with Lenorme, she had begun to tell lies: what would he say if he knew?

Malcolm found it dreary waiting in the street while she sat to the painter. He would not have minded it on Kelpie, for she was always occupation enough, but with only a couple of quiet horses to hold, it was dreary. He took to scrutinizing the faces that passed him, trying to understand them. To his surprise he found that almost everyone reminded him of somebody he had known before, though he could not always identify the likeness.

It was a pleasure to see his yacht lying so near him, and Davy on the deck, and to hear the blows of the hammer and the swish of the plane as the carpenter went on with the alterations to which he had set him, but he got tired of sharing in activity only with his ears and eyes. One thing he had by it, however, and that was-a good lesson in quiescent waiting-a grand thing for any man, and most of all for those in whom the active is strong.

The next day Florimel did not ride until after lunch, but took her maid with her to the studio, and Malcolm had a long morning with Kelpie. Once again he passed the beautiful lady in Rotten Row, but Kelpie was behaving in a most exemplary manner, and he could not tell whether she even saw him. I believe she thought her lecture had done him good. The day after that Lord Liftore was able to ride, and for some days Florimel and he rode in the park before dinner, when, as Malcolm followed on the new horse, he had to see his lordship make love to his sister, without being able to find the least colourable pretext of involuntary interference.

At length the parcel he had sent for from Lossie House arrived. He had explained to Mrs Courthope what he wanted the things for, and she had made no difficulty of sending them to the address he gave her. Lenorme had already begun the portrait, had indeed been working at it very busily, and was now quite ready for him to sit. The early morning being the only time a groom could contrive to spare-and that involved yet earlier attention to his horses, they arranged that Malcolm should be at the study every day by seven o'clock, until the painter's object was gained. So he mounted Kelpie at half past six of a fine breezy spring morning, rode across Hyde Park and down Grosvenor Place, and so reached Chelsea, where he put up his mare in Lenorme's stable-fortunately large enough to admit of an empty stall between her and the painter's grand screw, else a battle frightful to relate might have fallen to my lot.

Nothing could have been more to Malcolm's mind than such a surpassing opportunity of learning with assurance what sort of man Lenorme was; and the relation that arose between them extended the sittings far beyond the number necessary for the object proposed. How the first of them passed I must recount with some detail.

As soon as he arrived, he was shown into the painter's bedroom, where lay the portmanteau he had carried thither himself the night before: out of it, with a strange mingling of pleasure and sadness, he now took the garments of his father's vanished state-the filibeg of the dark tartan of his clan, in which green predominated; the French coat of black velvet of Genoa, with silver buttons; the bonnet, which ought to have had an eagle's feather, but had only an aigrette of diamonds; the black sporran of long goat's hair, with the silver clasp; the silver mounted dirk, with its appendages, set all with pale cairngorms