MARQUISE OF LOSSIE'S ADVENTURES: Malcolm & The Marquis's Secret. George MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ Graham says—o' a'body," returned Malcolm, "guid an' ill; —o' the guid to haud them guid an' mak them better—o' the ill to mak them guid."

      "Eh! gien that war true!" said the laird.

      They walked on in silence for a minute. All at once the laird threw up his hands, and fell flat on his face on the sand, his poor hump rising skywards above his head. Malcolm thought he had been seized with one of the fits to which he was subject, and knelt down beside him, to see if he could do anything for him. Then he found he was praying: he heard him—he could but just hear him—murmuring over and over, all but inaudibly, "Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts!" It seemed as if no other word dared mingle itself with that cry. Maniac or not—the mood of the man was supremely sane, and altogether too sacred to disturb. Malcolm retreated a little way, sat down in the sand and watched beside him. It was a solemn time—the full tide lapping up on the long yellow sand from the wide sea darkening out to the dim horizon: the gentle wind blowing through the molten darkness; overhead, the great vault without arch or keystone, of dim liquid blue, and sown with worlds so far removed they could only shine; and, on the shore, the centre of all the cosmic order, a misshapen heap of man, a tumulus in which lay buried a live and lovely soul! The one pillar of its chapter house had given way, and the downrushing ruin had so crushed and distorted it, that thenceforth until some resurrection should arrive, disorder and misshape must appear to it the law of the universe, and loveliness but the passing dream of a brain glad to deceive its own misery, and so to fancy it had received from above what it had itself generated of its own poverty from below. To the mind's eye of Malcolm, the little hump on the sand was heaved to the stars, higher than ever Roman tomb or Egyptian pyramid, in silent appeal to the sweet heavens, a dumb prayer for pity, a visible groan for the resurrection of the body. For a few minutes he sat as still as the prostrate laird.

      But bethinking himself that his grandfather would not go to bed until he went back, also that the laird was in no danger, as the tide was now receding, he resolved to go and get the old man to bed, and then return. For somehow he felt in his heart that he ought not to leave him alone. He could not enter into his strife to aid him, or come near him in any closer way than watching by his side until his morning dawned, or at least the waters of his flood assuaged, yet what he could he must: he would wake with him in his conflict.

      He rose and ran for the bored craig, through which lay the straight line to his abandoned boots.

      As he approached the rock, he heard the voices of Lord Lossie and Lady Florimel, who, although the one had not yet verified her being, the other had almost ruined his, were nevertheless enjoying the same thing, the sweetness of the night, together. Not hearing Malcolm's approach, they went on talking, and as he was passing swiftly through the bore, he heard these words from the marquis,—"The world's an ill baked cake, Flory, and all that a woman, at least, can do, is to cut as large a piece of it as possible, for immediate use."

      The remark being a general one, Malcolm cannot be much blamed if he stood with one foot lifted to hear Florimel's reply.

      "If it 's an ill baked one, papa," she returned, "I think it would be better to cut as small a piece of it as will serve for immediate use."

      Malcolm was delighted with her answer, never thinking whether it came from her head or her heart, for the two were at one in himself.

      As soon as he appeared on the other side of the rock, the marquis challenged him: "Who goes there?" he said.

      "Malcolm MacPhail, my lord."

      "You rascal!" said his lordship, good humouredly; "you've been listening!"

      "No muckle, my lord. I heard but a word apiece. An' I maun say my leddy had the best o' the loagic."

      "My lady generally has, I suspect," laughed the marquis. "How long have you been in the rock there?"

      "No ae meenute, my lord. I flang aff my butes to rin efter a freen', an' that's hoo ye didna hear me come up. I'm gaein' efter them noo, to gang hame i' them. Guid nicht, my lord. Guid nicht, my leddy."

      He turned and pursued his way; but Florimel's face, glimmering through the night, went with him as he ran.

      He told his grandfather how he had left the mad laird lying on his face, on the sands between the bored craig and the rocks of the promontory, and said he would like to go back to him.

      "He'll be hafing a fit, poor man," said Duncan. "Yes, my son, you must co to him and to your pest for him. After such an honour as we 'fe had this day, we mustn't pe forgetting our poor neighpours. Will you pe taking to him a trop of uisgebeatha?"

      "He taks naething o' that kin'," said Malcolm.

      He could not tell him that the madman, as men called him, lay wrestling in prayer with the Father of lights. The old highlander was not irreverent, but the thing would have been unintelligible to him. He could readily have believed that the supposed lunatic might be favoured beyond ordinary mortals; that at that very moment, lost in his fit, he might be rapt in a vision of the future—a wave of time, far off as yet from the souls of other men, even now rolling over his; but that a soul should seek after vital content by contact with its maker, was an idea belonging to a region which, in the highlander's being, lay as yet an unwatered desert, an undiscovered land, whence even no faintest odour had been wafted across the still air of surprised contemplation.

      About the time when Malcolm once more sped through the bored craig, the marquis and Lady Florimel were walking through the tunnel on their way home, chatting about a great ball they were going to give the tenants.

      He found the laird where he had left him, and thought at first he must now surely be asleep; but once more bending over him, he could hear him still murmuring at intervals, "Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts!"

      Not less compassionate, and more sympathetic than Eliphaz or Bildad or Zophar, Malcolm again took his place near him, and sat watching by him until the gray dawn began in the east. Then all at once the laird rose to his feet, and without a look on either side walked steadily away towards the promontory. Malcolm rose also, and gazed after him until he vanished amongst the rocks, no motion of his distorted frame witnessing other than calmness of spirit. So his watcher returned in peace through the cool morning air to the side of his slumbering grandfather.

      No one in the Seaton of Portlossie ever dreamed of locking door or window at night.

      CHAPTER XXIII:

       ARMAGEDDON

       Table of Contents

      The home season of the herring fishery was to commence a few days after the occurrences last recorded. The boats had all returned from other stations, and the little harbour was one crowd of stumpy masts, each with its halliard, the sole cordage visible, rove through the top of it, for the hoisting of a lug sail, tanned to a rich red brown. From this underwood towered aloft the masts of a coasting schooner, discharging its load of coal at the little quay. Other boats lay drawn up on the beach in front of the Seaton, and beyond it on the other side of the burn. Men and women were busy with the brown nets, laying them out on the short grass of the shore, mending them with netting needles like small shuttles, carrying huge burdens of them on their shoulders in the hot sunlight; others were mending, calking, or tarring their boats, and looking to their various fittings. All was preparation for the new venture in their own waters, and everything went merrily and hopefully. Wives who had not accompanied their husbands now had them home again, and their anxieties would henceforth endure but for a night—joy СКАЧАТЬ