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

bursts the husk.

When Malcolm lifted his head, the sun had gone down. He rose and wandered along the sand towards the moon-at length blooming out of the darkening sky, where she had hung all day like a washed out rag of light, to revive as the sunlight faded. He watched the banished life of her day swoon returning, until, gathering courage, she that had been no one, shone out fair and clear, in conscious queendom of the night. Then, in the friendly infolding of her dreamlight and the dreamland it created, Malcolm's soul revived as in the comfort of the lesser, the mitigated glory, and, as the moon into radiance from the darkened air, and the nightingale into music from the sleep stilled world of birds, blossomed from the speechlessness of thought and feeling into a strange kind of brooding song. If the words were half nonsense, the feeling was not the less real. Such as they were, they came almost of themselves, and the tune came with them.


Rose o' my hert, Open yer leaves to the lampin' mune; Into the curls lat her keek an' dert; She'll tak' the colour but gi'e ye tune.

Buik o' my brain, Open yer neuks to the starry signs; Lat the een o' the holy luik an' strain An' glimmer an' score atween the lines.

Cup o' my sowl, Gowd an' diamond an' ruby cup, Ye're noucht ava but a toom dry bowl, Till the wine o' the kingdom fill ye up,

Conscience glass, Mirror the infinite all in thee; Melt the bounded and make it pass Into the tideless, shoreless sea.

World of my life, Swing thee round thy sunny track; Fire and wind and water and strife- Carry them all to the glory back.

Ever as he halted for a word, the moonlight, and the low sweet waves on the sands, filled up the pauses to his ear; and there he lay, looking up to the sky and the moon and the rose diamond stars, his thoughts half dissolved in feeling, and his feeling half crystallised to thought.

Out of the dim wood came two lovely forms into the moonlight, and softly approached him-so softly that he knew nothing of their nearness until Florimel spoke.

"Is that MacPhail?" she said.

"Yes, my lady," answered Malcolm, and bounded to his feet

"What were you singing?"

"You could hardly call it singing, my lady. We should call it crooning in Scotland."

"Croon it again then."

"I couldn't, my lady. It's gone."

"You don't mean to pretend that you were extemporising?"

"I was crooning what came-like the birds, my lady. I couldn't have done it if I had thought anyone was near."

Then, half ashamed, and anxious to turn the talk from the threshold of his secret chamber, he said, "Did you ever see a lovelier night, ladies?"

"Not often, certainly," answered Clementina.

She was not quite pleased and not altogether offended at his addressing them dually. A curious sense of impropriety in the state of things bewildered her-she and her friend talking thus, in the moonlight, on the seashore, doing nothing, with her friend's groom-and such a groom, his mistress asking him to sing again, and he addressing them both with a remark on the beauty of the night! She had braved the world a good deal, but she did not choose to brave it where nothing was to be had, and she was too honest to say to herself that the world would never know-that there was nothing to brave: she was not one to do that in secret to which she would not hold her face. Yet all the time she had a doubt whether this young man, whom it would certainly be improper to encourage by addressing from any level but one of lofty superiority, did not belong to a higher sphere than theirs; while certainly no man could be more unpresuming, or less forward even when opposing his opinion to theirs. Still-if an angel were to come down and take charge of their horses, would ladies be justified in treating him as other than a servant?

"This is just the sort of night," Malcolm resumed, "when I could almost persuade myself I was not quite sure I wasn't dreaming. It makes a kind of border land betwixt waking and sleeping, knowing and dreaming, in our brain. In a night like this I fancy we feel something like the colour of what God feels when he is making the lovely chaos of a new world, a new kind of world, such as has never been before."

"I think we had better go in," said Clementina to Florimel, and turned away.

Florimel made no objection, and they walked towards the wood.

"You really must get rid of him as soon as you can," said Clementina, when again the moonless night of the pines had received them: "he is certainly more than half a lunatic. It is almost full moon now," she added, looking up. "I have never seen him so bad."

Florimel's clear laugh rang through the wood.

"Don't be alarmed, Clementina," she said. "He has talked like that ever since I knew him; and if he is mad, at least he is no worse than he has always been. It is nothing but poetry-yeast on the brain, my father used to say. We should have a fish poet of him- a new thing in the world, he said. He would never be cured till he broke out in a book of poetry. I should be afraid my father would break the catechism and not rest in his grave till the resurrection, if I were to send Malcolm away."

For Malcolm, he was at first not a little mazed at the utter blankness of the wall against which his words had dashed themselves. Then he smiled queerly to himself, and said:

"I used to think ilka bonny lassie bude to be a poetess-for hoo sud she be bonnie but by the informin' hermony o' her bein'?-an' what's that but the poetry o' the Poet, the Makar, as they ca'd a poet i' the auld Scots tongue?-but haith! I ken better an' waur noo! There's gane the twa bonniest I ever saw, an' I s' lay my heid there's mair poetry in auld man faced Miss Horn nor in a dizzin like them. Ech! but it's some sair to bide. It's sair upon a man to see a bonny wuman 'at has nae poetry, nae inward lichtsome hermony in her. But it's dooms sairer yet to come upo' ane wantin' cowmon sense! Saw onybody ever sic a gran' sicht as my Leddy Clementina! -an' wha can say but she's weel named frae the hert oot?-as guid at the hert, I'll sweir, as at the een! but eh me! to hear the blether o' nonsense 'at comes oot atween thae twa bonny yetts o' music-an' a' cause she winna gi'e her hert rist an' time eneuch to grow bigger, but maun aye be settin' at things richt afore their time, an' her ain fitness for the job! It's sic a faithless kin' o' a w'y that! I could jist fancy I saw her gaein' a' roon' the trees o' a simmer nicht, pittin' hiney upo' the peers an' the peaches, 'cause she cudna lippen to natur' to ripe them sweet eneuch -only 'at she wad never tak the hiney frae the bees. She's jist the pictur' o' Natur' hersel' turnt some dementit. I cud jist fancy I saw her gaein' aboot amo' the ripe corn, on sic a nicht as this o' the mune, happin' 't frae the frost. An' I s' warran' no ae mesh in oor nets wad she lea' ohn clippit open gien the twine had a herrin' by the gills. She's e'en sae pitifu' owre the sinner 'at she winna gi'e him a chance o' growin' better. I won'er gien she believes 'at there's ae great thoucht abune a', an' aneth a', an' roon' a', an' in a'thing. She cudna be in sic a mist o' benevolence and parritch hertitness gien she cud lippen till a wiser. It's na'e won'er she kens naething aboot poetry but the meeserable sids an' sawdist an' leavin's the gran' leddies sing an' ca' sangs! Nae mair is 't ony won'er she sud tak' me for dementit, gien she h'ard what I was singin'! only I canna think she did that, for I was but croonin' till mysel'."-Malcolm was wrong there, for he was singing out loud and clear.-"That was but a kin' o' an unknown tongue atween Him an' me an' no anither."


CHAPTER XLI: THE SWIFT


Florimel succeeded so far in reassuring her friend as to the safety if not sanity of her groom, that she made no objection to yet another reading from "St Ronan's Well"-upon which occasion an incident occurred that did far more to reassure her than all the attestations of his mistress.

Clementina, in consenting, had proposed, it being a warm sunny afternoon, that they should that time go down to the lake, and sit with their work on the bank, while Malcolm read. This lake, like the whole place, and some of the people in it, was rather strange -not resembling any piece of water that Malcolm at least had ever seen. More than a mile in length, but quite narrow, it lay on the seashore-a lake of deep fresh water, with nothing between it and the sea but a bank of sand, up which the great waves came rolling in southwesterly winds, one now and then toppling over-to the disconcerting no doubt of the pikey multitude within.

The head only of the mere came into Clementina's property, and they sat on the landward side of it, on a sandy bank, among the half exposed roots of a few ancient firs, where a little stream that fed the lake had made a small gully, and was now trotting over a bed of pebbles in the bottom of it. Clementina was describing to Florimel the peculiarities of the place, how there was no outlet to the lake, how the water went filtering through the sand into the sea, how in some parts it was very deep, and what large pike there were in it. Malcolm sat a little aside as usual, with his face towards the ladies, and the book open in his hand, waiting a sign to begin, but looking at the lake, which here was some fifty yards broad, reedy at the edge, dark and deep in the centre. All at once he sprang to his feet, dropping the book, ran down to the brink of the water, undoing his buckled belt and pulling off his coat as he ran, threw himself over the bordering reeds into the pool, and disappeared with a great plash.

Clementina gave a scream, and started up with distraction in her face: she made no doubt that in the sudden ripeness of his insanity he had committed suicide. But Florimel, though startled by her friend's cry, laughed, and crowded out assurances that Malcolm knew well enough what he was about. It was longer, however, than she found pleasant, before a black head appeared-yards away, for he had risen at a great slope, swimming towards the other side. What could he be after? Near the middle he swam more softly, and almost stopped. Then first they spied a small dark object on the surface. Almost the same moment it rose into the air. They thought Malcolm had flung it up. Instantly they perceived that it was a bird-a swift. Somehow it had dropped into the water, but a lift from Malcolm's hand had restored it to the air of its bliss.

But instead of