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

to be able to get on without a maid! You should have seen me in Scotland! I hated having a woman about me then. And indeed I don't like it a bit better now -only everybody has one, and your clothes want looking after," added Florimel, thinking what a weight it would be off her if she could get rid of Caley altogether. "-But I should like to take my horse," she said. "I don't know what I should do in the country without Abbot."

"Of course; we must have our horses," returned Clementina. "And- yes-you had better bring your groom."

"Please. You will find him very useful. He can do anything and everything--and is so kind and helpful!"

"Except to his horse," Clementina was on the point of saying, but thought again she would first secure the mistress, and bide her time to attack the man.

Before they parted, the two ladies had talked themselves into ecstasies over the anticipated enjoyments of their scheme. It must be carried out at once.

"Let us tell nobody," said Lady Clementina, "and set off tomorrow."

"Enchanting!" cried Florimel, in full response.

Then her brow clouded.

"There is one difficulty, though," she said. "-No man could ride Kelpie with a led horse; and if we had to employ another, Liftore would be sure to hear where we had gone."

"That would spoil all," said Clementina. "But how much better it would be to give that poor creature a rest, and bring the other I see him on sometimes!"

"And by the time we came back, there would not be a living creature, horse or man, anything bigger than a rat, about the stable. Kelpie herself would be dead of hunger, if she hadn't been shot. No, no; where Malcolm goes Kelpie must go. Besides, she's such fun-you can't think!"

"Then I'll tell you what!" cried Clementina, after a moment's pause of perplexity: "we'll ride down! It's not a hundred miles, and we can take as many days on the road as we please."

"Better and better!" cried Florimel. "We'll run away with each other.-But what will dear old Bellair say?"

"Never mind her," rejoined Clementina. "She will have nothing to say. You can write and tell her as much as will keep her from being really alarmed. Order your man to get everything ready, and I will instruct mine. He is such a staid old fellow, you know, he will be quite protection. Tomorrow morning we shall set out together for a ride in Richmond Park-that lying in our way. You can leave a letter on the breakfast table, saying you are gone with me for a little quiet. You're not in chancery-are you?"

"I don't know," answered Florimel. "I suppose I'm all right.- Any how, whether I'm in chancery or not, here I am, and going with you; and if chancery don't like it, chancery may come and fetch me."

"Send anything you think you may want to my house. I shall get a box ready, and we will write from some town on our way to have it sent there, and then we can write for it from The Gloom. We shall find all mere necessaries there."

So the thing was arranged: they would start quite early the next morning; and that there might be no trouble in the streets, Malcolm should go before with Kelpie, and wait them in the park.


CHAPTER XXXVIII: THE JOURNEY


Malcolm was overjoyed at the prospect of an escape to the country -and yet more to find that his mistress wanted to have him with her-more still to understand, that the journey was to be kept a secret. Perhaps now, far from both Caley and Liftore, he might say something to open her eyes; yet how should he avoid the appearance of a tale bearer?

It was a sweet fresh morning, late in the spring-those loveliest of hours that unite the seasons, like the shimmering question of green or blue in the feathers of a peacock. He had set out an hour before the rest, and now, a little way within the park, was coaxing Kelpie to stand, that he might taste the morning in peace. The sun was but a few degrees above the horizon, shining with all his heart, and the earth was taking the shine with all hers. "I too am light," she was saying, "although I can but receive it." The trees were covered with baby leaves, half wrapped in their swaddling clothes, and their breath was a warm aromatic odour in the glittering air. The air and the light seemed one, and Malcolm felt as if his soul were breathing the light into its very depths, while his body was drinking the soft spicy wind. For Kelpie, she was as full of life as if she had been meant for a winged horse, but by some accident of nature the wing cases had never opened, and the wing life was for ever trying to get out at her feet. The consequent restlessness, where there was plenty of space as here, caused Malcolm no more discomposure than, in his old fishing days, a gale with plenty of sea room. And the song of the larks was one with the light and the air. The budding of the trees was their way of singing; but the larks beat them at that. "What a power of joy," thought Malcolm, "there must be in God, to be able to keep so many larks so full of bliss!" He was going to say-"without getting tired;" but he saw that it was the eternal joy itself that bubbled from their little fountains: weariness there would be the silence of all song, would be death, utter vanishment to the gladness of the universe. The sun would go out like a spark upon burnt paper, and the heart of man would forget the sound of laughter. Then he said to himself: "The larks do not make their own singing; do mortals make their own sighing?" And he saw that at least they might open wider the doors of their hearts to the Perseus Joy that comes to slay the grief monsters. Then he thought how his life had been widening out with the years. He could not say that it was now more pleasant than it had been; he had Stoicism enough to doubt whether it would ever become so from any mere change of circumstances. Dangers and sufferings that one is able for, are not misfortunes or even hardships-so far from such, that youth delights in them. Indeed he sorely missed the adventure of the herring fishing. Kelpie, however, was as good as a stiff gale. If only all were well with his sister! Then he would go back to Portlossie and have fishing enough. But he must be patient and follow as he was led. At three and twenty, he reflected, Milton was content to seem to himself but a poor creature, and was careful only to be ready for whatever work should hereafter be required of him: such contentment, with such hope and resolve at the back of it, he saw to be the right and the duty both of every man. He whose ambition is to be ready when he is wanted, whatever the work may be, may wait not the less watchful that he is content. His heart grew lighter, his head clearer, and by the time the two ladies with their attendant appeared, he felt such a masterdom over Kelpie as he had never felt before.

They rode twenty miles that day with ease, putting up at the first town. The next day they rode about the same distance. They next day they rode nearly thirty miles. On the fourth, with an early start, and a good rest in the middle, they accomplished a yet greater distance, and at night arrived at The Gloom, Wastbeach-after a journey of continuous delight to three at least of the party, Florimel and Malcolm having especially enjoyed that portion of it which led through Surrey, where England and Scotland meet and mingle in waste, heathery moor, and rich valley. Much talk had passed between the ladies, and Florimel had been set thinking about many things, though certainly about none after the wisest fashion.

A young half moon was still up when, after riding miles through pine woods, they at length drew near the house. Long before they reached it, however, a confused noise of dogs met them in the forest. Clementina had written to the housekeeper, and every dog about the place, and the dogs were multitudinous, had been expecting her all day, had heard the sound of their horses' hoofs miles off and had at once begun to announce her approach. Nor were the dogs the only cognisant or expectant animals. Most of the creatures about the place understood that something was happening, and probably associated it with their mistress; for almost every live thing knew her-from the rheumatic cart horse, forty years of age, and every whit as respectable in Clementina's eyes as her father's old butler, to the wild cats that haunted the lofts and garrets of the old Elizabethan hunting lodge.

When they dismounted, the ladies could hardly get into the house for dogs; those which could not reach their mistress, turned to Florimel, and came swarming about her and leaping upon her, until, much as she liked animal favour, she would gladly have used her whip-but dared not, because of the presence of their mistress. If the theories of that mistress allowed them anything of a moral nature, she was certainly culpable in refusing them their right to a few cuts of the whip.

Mingled with all the noises of dogs and horses, came a soft nestling murmur that filled up the interspaces of sound which even their tumult could not help leaving. Florimel was too tired to hear it, but Malcolm heard it, and it filled all the interspaces of his soul with a speechless delight. He knew it for the still small voice of the awful sea.

Florimel scarcely cast a glance around the dark old fashioned room into which she was shown, but went at once to bed, and when the old housekeeper carried her something from the supper table at which she had been expected, she found her already fast asleep. By the time Malcolm had put Kelpie to rest, he also was a little tired, and lay awake no moment longer than his sister.


CHAPTER XXXIX: DISCIPLINE


What with rats and mice, and cats and owls, and creaks and cracks, there was no quiet about the place from night to morning; and what with swallows and rooks, and cocks and kine, and horses and foals, and dogs and pigeons and peacocks, and guinea fowls and turkeys and geese, and every farm creature but pigs, which, with all her zootrophy, Clementina did not like, no quiet from morning to night. But if there was no quiet, there was plenty of calm, and the sleep of neither brother nor sister was disturbed.

Florimel awoke in the sweetest concert of pigeon murmuring, duck diplomacy, fowl foraging, foal whinnering-the word wants an r in it-and all the noises of rural life. The sun was shining into the room by a window far off at the further end, bringing with him strange sylvan shadows, not at once to be interpreted. He must have been shining for hours, so bright and steady did he shine. She sprang out of bed-with no lazy London resurrection of the old buried, half sodden corpse, sleepy and ashamed, but with the new birth of the new day, refreshed and strong, like a Hercules baby. A few aching remnants of stiffness was all that was left