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

stop because I grew sorry for him. I am sorry now. So I hope you will take no notice of it. In fact, I begin to like the rascal: you know I was never favourably impressed with him. By Jove! it is not every mistress that can have such a devoted attendant. I only hope his over zeal in your service may never get you into some compromising position. He is hardly, with all his virtues, the proper servant for a young lady to have about her; he has had no training-no proper training at all, you see. But you must let the villain nurse himself for a day or two anyhow. It would be torture to make him ride, after what I gave him."

His lordship spoke feelingly, with heroic endurance indeed; and if Malcolm should dare give his account of the fracas, he trusted to the word of a gentleman to outweigh that of a groom.

Not all to whom it may seem incredible that a nobleman should thus lie, are themselves incapable of doing likewise. Any man may put himself in training for a liar by doing things he would be ashamed to have known. The art is easily learned, and to practise it well is a great advantage to people with designs. Men of ability, indeed, if they take care not to try hard to speak the truth, will soon become able to lie as truthfully as any sneak that sells grease for butter to the poverty of the New Cut.

It is worth remarking to him who can from the lie factual carry his thought deeper to the lie essential, that all the power of a lie comes from the truth; it has none in itself. So strong is the truth that a mere resemblance to it is the source of strength to its opposite-until it be found that like is not the same.

Florimel had already made considerable progress in the art, but proficiency in lying does not always develop the power of detecting it. She knew that her father had on one occasion struck Malcolm, and that he had taken it with the utmost gentleness, confessing himself in the wrong. Also she had the impression that for a menial to lift his hand against a gentleman, even in self defence, was a thing unheard of. The blow Malcolm had struck Liftore was for her, not himself. Therefore, while her confidence in Malcolm's courage and prowess remained unshaken, she was yet able to believe that Liftore had done as he said, and supposed that Malcolm had submitted. In her heart she pitied without despising him.

Caley herself took him the message that he would not be wanted. As she delivered it, she smiled an evil smile and dropped a mocking courtesy, with her gaze well fixed on his two black eyes and the great bruise between them.

When Liftore mounted to accompany Lady Lossie, it took all the pluck that belonged to his high breed to enable him to smile and smile, with twenty counsellors in different parts of his body feelingly persuading him that he was at least a liar. As they rode, Florimel asked him how he came to be at the studio that morning. He told her that he had wanted very much to see her portrait before the final touches were given it. He could have made certain suggestions, he believed, that no one else could. He had indeed, he confessed- and felt absolutely virtuous in doing so, because here he spoke a fact-heard from his aunt that Florimel was to be there that morning for the last time: it was therefore his only chance; but he had expected to be there hours before she was out of bed. For the rest, be hoped he had been punished enough, seeing her rascally groom-and once more his lordship laughed peculiarly-had but just failed of breaking his arm; it was all he could do to hold the reins.


CHAPTER XXXIV: AN OLD ENEMY


One Sunday evening-it must have been just while Malcolm and Blue Peter stood in the Strand listening to a voluntary that filled and overflowed an otherwise empty church-a short, stout, elderly woman was walking lightly along the pavement of a street of small houses, not far from a thoroughfare which, crowded like a market the night before, had now two lively borders only-of holiday makers mingled with church goers. The bells for evening prayers were ringing. The sun had vanished behind the smoke and steam of London; indeed he might have set-it was hard to say without consulting the almanac: but it was not dark yet. The lamps in the street were lighted, however, and also in the church she passed. She carried a small bible in her hand, folded in a pocket handkerchief and looked a decent woman from the country. Her quest was a place where the minister said his prayers and did not read them out of a book: she had been brought up a Presbyterian, and had prejudices in favour of what she took for the simpler form of worship. Nor had she gone much farther before she came upon a chapel which seemed to promise all she wanted. She entered, and a sad looking woman showed her to a seat. She sat down square, fixing her eyes at once on the pulpit, rather dimly visible over many pews, as if it were one of the mountains that surrounded her Jerusalem. The place was but scantily lighted, for the community at present could ill afford to burn daylight. When the worship commenced, and the congregation rose to sing, she got up with a jerk that showed the duty as unwelcome as unexpected, but seemed by the way she settled herself in her seat for the prayer, already thereby reconciled to the differences between Scotch church customs and English chapel customs. She went to sleep softly, and woke warily as the prayer came to a close.

While the congregation again sang, the minister who had officiated hitherto left the pulpit, and another ascended to preach. When he began to read the text, the woman gave a little start, and leaning forward, peered very hard to gain a satisfactory sight of his face between the candles on each side of it, but without success; she soon gave up her attempted scrutiny, and thence forward seemed to listen with marked attention. The sermon was a simple, earnest, at times impassioned appeal to the hearts and consciences of the congregation. There was little attempt in it at the communication of knowledge of any kind, but the most indifferent hearer must have been aware that the speaker was earnestly straining after something. To those who understood, it was as if he would force his way through every stockade of prejudice, ditch of habit, rampart of indifference, moat of sin, wall of stupidity, and curtain of ignorance, until he stood face to face with the conscience of his hearer.

"Rank Arminianism!" murmured the woman. "Whaur's the gospel o' that?" But still she listened with seeming intentness, while something of wonder mingled with the something else that set in motion every live wrinkle in her forehead, and made her eyebrows undulate like writhing snakes.

At length the preacher rose to eloquence, an eloquence inspired by the hunger of his soul after truth eternal, and the love he bore to his brethren who fed on husks-an eloquence innocent of the tricks of elocution or the arts of rhetoric: to have discovered himself using one of them would have sent him home to his knees in shame and fear-an eloquence not devoid of discords, the strings of his instrument being now slack with emotion, now tense with vision, yet even in those discords shrouding the essence of all harmony. When he ceased, the silence that followed seemed instinct with thought, with that speech of the spirit which no longer needs the articulating voice.

"It canna be the stickit minister!" said the woman to herself. The congregation slowly dispersed, but she sat motionless until all were gone, and the sad faced woman was putting out the lights. Then she rose, drew near through the gloom, and asked her the name of the gentleman who had given them such a grand sermon. The woman told her, adding that, although he had two or three times spoken to them at the prayer meeting-such words of comfort, the poor soul added, as she had never in her life heard before-this was the first time he had occupied the pulpit. The woman thanked her, and went out into the street.

"God bless me!" she said to herself, as she walked away; "it is the stickit minister! Weel, won'ers 'ill never cease. The age o' mirracles 'ill be come back, I'm thinkin'!" And she laughed an oily contemptuous laugh in the depths of her profuse person.

What caused her astonishment need cause none to the thoughtful mind. The man was no longer burdened with any anxiety as to his reception by his hearers; he was hampered by no necromantic agony to raise the dead letter of the sermon buried in the tail pocket of his coat; he had thirty years more of life, and a whole granary filled with such truths as grow for him who is ever breaking up the clods of his being to the spiritual sun and wind and dew; and above all he had an absolute yet expanding confidence in his Father in heaven, and a tender love for everything human. The tongue of the dumb had been in training for song. And first of all he had learned to be silent while he had nought to reveal. He had been trained to babble about religion, but through God's grace had failed in his babble, and that was in itself a success. He would have made one of the swarm that year after year cast themselves like flies on the burning sacrifice that they may live on its flesh, with evil odours extinguishing the fire that should have gone up in flame; but a burning coal from off the altar had been laid on his lips, and had silenced them in torture. For thirty years he had held his peace, until the word of God had become as a fire in his bones: it was now breaking forth in flashes.

On the Monday, Mrs Catanach sought the shop of the deacon that was an ironmonger, secured for herself a sitting in the chapel for the next half year, and prepaid the sitting.

"Wha kens," she said to herself "what birds may come to gether worms an' golachs (beetles) aboot the boody craw (scarecrow), Sanny Grame!"

She was one to whom intrigue, founded on the knowledge of private history, was as the very breath of her being: she could not exist in composure without it. Wherever she went, therefore-and her changes of residence had not been few-it was one of her first cares to enter into connection with some religious community, first that she might have scope for her calling-that of a midwife, which in London would probably be straightened towards that of mere monthly nurse-and next that thereby she might have good chances for the finding of certain weeds of occult power that spring mostly in walled gardens, and are rare on the roadside-poisonous things mostly, called generically secrets.

At this time she had been for some painful months in possession of a most important one-painful, I say, because all those months she had discovered no possibility of making use of it. The trial had been hard. Her one passion was to drive the dark horses of society, and here she had been sitting week after week on the coach box over the finest team she had ever handled, ramping and "foming tarre," unable to give