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

she had passed almost the whole of the preceding portion of it. There was little or nothing in the affair she could have wished otherwise except its origin. She was mischievous enough to enjoy even the thought of the consternation it would cause at Portland Place. She did not realize all its awkwardness. A letter to Lady Bellair when she reached home would, she said to herself, set everything right; and if Malcolm had now repented and put about, she would instantly have ordered him to hold on for Lossie. But it was mortifying that she should have come at the will of Malcolm, and not by her own-worse than mortifying that perhaps she would have to say so. If she were going to say so, she must turn him away as soon as she arrived. There was no help for it. She dared not keep him after that in the face of society. But she might take the bold, and perhaps a little dangerous measure of adopting the flight as altogether her own madcap idea. Her thoughts went floundering in the bog of expediency, until she was tired, and declined from thought to reverie.

Then dawning out of the dreamland of her past, appeared the image of Lenorme. Pure pleasure, glorious delight, such as she now felt, could not long possess her mind, without raising in its charmed circle the vision of the only man except her father whom she had ever-something like loved. Her behaviour to him had not yet roused in her shame or sorrow or sense of wrong. She had driven him from her; she was ashamed of her relation to him; she had caused him bitter suffering; she had all but promised to marry another man; yet she had not the slightest wish for that man's company there and then: with no one of her acquaintance but Lenorme could she have shared this conscious splendour of life.

"Would to God he had been born a gentleman instead of a painter!" she said to herself when her imagination had brought him from the past, and set him in the midst of the present.

"Rank," she said, "I am above caring about. In that he might be ever so far my inferior, and welcome, if only he had been of a good family, a gentleman born!"

She was generosity, magnanimity itself in her own eyes! Yet he was of far better family than she knew, for she had never taken the trouble to inquire into his history. And now she was so much easier in her mind since she had so cruelly broken with him, that she felt positively virtuous because she had done it, and he was not at that moment by her side. And yet if he had that moment stepped from behind the mainsail, she would in all probability have thrown herself into his arms.

The day passed on: Florimel grew tired and went to sleep; woke and had her dinner; took a volume of the "Arabian Nights," and read herself again to sleep; woke again; went on deck; saw the sun growing weary in the west. And still the unwearied wind blew, and still the Psyche danced on, as unwearied as the wind.

The sunset was rather an assumption than a decease, a reception of him out of their sight into an eternity of gold and crimson; and when he was gone, and the gorgeous bliss had withered into a dove hued grief, then the cool, soft twilight, thoughtful of the past and its love, crept out of the western caves over the breast of the water, and filled the dome and made of itself a great lens royal, through which the stars and their motions were visible; and the ghost of Aurora with both hands lifted her shroud above her head and made a dawn for the moon on the verge of the watery horizon- a dawn as of the past, the hour of inverted hope.

Not a word all day had been uttered between Malcolm and his mistress: when the moon appeared, with the waves sweeping up against her face, he approached Florimel where she sat in the stern. Davy was steering.

"Will your ladyship come forward and see how the Psyche goes?" he said. "At the stern, you can see only the passive part of her motion. It is quite another thing to see the will of her at work in the bows."

At first she was going to refuse; but she changed her mind, or her mind changed her: she was not much more of a living and acting creature yet than the Psyche herself. She said nothing, but rose, and permitted Malcolm to help her forward.

It was the moon's turn now to be level with the water, and as Florimel stood on the larboard side, leaning over and gazing down, she saw her shine through the little feather of spray the cutwater sent curling up before it, and turn it into pearls and semiopals.

"She's got a bone in her mouth, you see, my lady," said old Travers.

"Go aft till I call you, Travers," said Malcolm.

Rose was in Florimel's cabin, and they were now quite alone.

"My lady," said Malcolm, "I can't bear to have you angry with me."

"Then you ought not to deserve it," returned Florimel.

"My lady, if you knew all, you would not say I deserved it."

"Tell me all then, and let me judge."

"I cannot tell you all yet, but I will tell you something which may perhaps incline you to feel merciful. Did your ladyship ever think what could make me so much attached to your father?"

"No indeed. I never saw anything peculiar in it. Even nowadays there are servants to be found who love their masters. It seems to me natural enough. Besides he was very kind to you."

"It was natural indeed, my lady-more natural than you think. Kind to me he was, and that was natural too."

"Natural to him, no doubt, for he was kind to everybody."

"My grandfather told you something of my early history-did he not, my lady?"

"Yes-at least I think I remember his doing so."

"Will you recall it, and see whether it suggests nothing?"

But Florimel could remember nothing in particular, she said. She had in truth, for as much as she was interested at the time, forgotten almost everything of the story.

"I really cannot think what you mean," she added. "If you are going to be mysterious, I shall resume my place by the tiller. Travers is deaf, and Davy is dumb: I prefer either."

"My lady," said Malcolm, "your father knew my mother, and persuaded her that he loved her."

Florimel drew herself up, and would have looked him to ashes if wrath could burn. Malcolm saw he must come to the point at once or the parley would cease.

"My lady," he said, "your father was my father too. I am a son of the Marquis of Lossie, and your brother-your ladyship's half brother, that is."

She looked a little stunned. The gleam died out of her eyes, and the glow out of her cheek. She turned and leaned over the bulwark. He said no more, but stood watching her. She raised herself suddenly, looked at him, and said,

"Do I understand you?"

"I am your brother," Malcolm. repeated.

She made a step forward, and held out her hand. He took the little thing in his great grasp tenderly. Her lip trembled. She gazed at him for an instant, full in the face, with a womanly, believing expression.

"My poor Malcolm!" she said, "I am sorry for you."

She withdrew her hand, and again leaned over the bulwark. Her heart was softened towards her groom brother, and for a moment it seemed to her that some wrong had been done. Why should the one be a marchioness and the other a groom? Then came the thought that now all was explained. Every peculiarity of the young man, every gift extraordinary of body, mind, or spirit, his strength, his beauty, his courage, and honesty, his simplicity, nobleness, and affection, yes, even what in him was mere doggedness and presumption, all, everything explained itself to Florimel in the fact that the incomprehensible fisherman groom, that talked like a parson, was the son of her father. She never thought of the woman that was his mother, and what share she might happen to have in the phenomenon -thought only of her father, and a little pitifully of the half honour and more than half disgrace infolding the very existence of her attendant. As usual her thoughts were confused. The one moment the poor fellow seemed to exist only on sufferance, having no right to be there at all, for as fine a fellow as he was; the next she thought how immeasurably he was indebted to the family of the Colonsays.

Then arose the remembrance of his arrogance and presumption in assuming on such a ground something more than guardianship- absolute tyranny over her, and with the thought pride and injury at once got the upper hand. Was she to be dictated to by a low born, low bred fellow like that-a fellow whose hands were harder than any leather, not with doing things for his amusement but actually with earning his daily bread-one that used to smell so of fish -on the ground of right too-and such a right as ought to exclude him for ever from her presence!-She turned to him again.

"How long have you known this-this-painful-indeed I must confess to finding it an awkward and embarrassing fact? I presume you do know it?" she said, coldly and searchingly.

"My father confessed it on his deathbed."

"Confessed!" echoed Florimel's pride, but she restrained her tongue.

"It explains much," she said, with a sort of judicial relief. "There has been a great change upon you since then. Mind I only say explains. It could never justify such behaviour as yours- no, not if you had been my true brother. There is some excuse, I daresay, to be made for your ignorance and inexperience. No doubt the discovery turned your head. Still I am at a loss to understand how you could imagine that sort of-of-that sort of thing gave you any right over me!"

"Love has its rights, my lady," said Malcolm.

Again her eyes flashed and her cheek flushed. "I cannot permit you to talk so to me. You must not fancy such things are looked upon in our position with the same indifference as in yours. You must not flatter yourself that you can be allowed to cherish the same feelings towards me as if-as if-you were really my brother. I am sorry for you, Malcolm, as I said already; but you have altogether missed your mark if you think that can alter facts, or shelter you from the consequences of presumption."

Again she turned away. Malcolm's heart was sore for her. How grievously she had sunk from the Lady Florimel of the old days! It was all from being so constantly with that wretched woman and her vile nephew. Had he been able to foresee such a rapid declension, he would have taken her away long ago, and let come of her feelings what might. He had been too careful over them.

"Indeed," Florimel resumed, but this time without turning towards him, "I do not see how things can possibly, after what you have told me, remain as they are. I should not feel at all comfortable in having one about me who would be constantly supposing he had rights, and reflecting on my father for fancied injustice,