The Marquis of Lossie by George MacDonald (best 7 inch ereader txt) 📕

enough. But for the sake of harmony, and right, and order, and that I may keep near you, I shall appoint three men of yourselves in each village, to whom any man or woman may go with request or complaint. If two of those three men judge the matter fit to refer to me, the probability is that I shall see it as they do. If any man think them scant of justice towards him, let him come to me. Should I find myself in doubt, I have here at my side my beloved and honoured master to whom to apply for counsel, knowing that what oracle he may utter I shall receive straight from the innermost parts of a temple of the Holy Ghost. Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.

"And, in conclusion, why should you hear from any lips but my own, that this lady beside me, the daughter of an English earl of ancient house, has honoured the house of Lossie by consenting to become its marchioness? Lady Clementina Thornicroft possesses large estates in the south of England, but not for them did I seek her favour-as you will be convinced when you reflect what the fact involves which she has herself desired me to make known to you- namely, that it was while yet she was unacquainted with my birth and position, and had never dreamed that I was other than only a fisherman and a groom, 'that she accepted me for her husband.- I thank my God."

With that he took his seat, and after hearty cheering, a glass or two of wine, and several speeches, all rose, and went to look at the portrait of the late marquis.


CHAPTER LXXII: KNOTTED STRANDS


Lady Clementina had to return to England to see her lawyers, and arrange her affairs. Before she went, she would gladly have gone with Malcolm over every spot where had passed any portion of his history, and at each heard its own chapter or paragraph; but Malcolm obstinately refused to begin such a narration before Clementina was mistress of the region to which it mainly belonged. After that, he said, he would, even more gladly, he believed, than she, occupy all the time that could be spared from the duties of the present in piecing together the broken reflections of the past in the pools of memory, until they had lived both their lives over again together, from earliest recollection to the time when the two streams flowed into one, thenceforth to mingle more and more inwardly to endless ages.

So the Psyche was launched. Lady Clementina, Florimel, and Lenorme were the passengers, and Malcolm, Blue Peter, and Davy the crew. There was no room for servants, yet was there no lack of service. They had rough weather a part of the time, and neither Clementina nor Lenorme was altogether comfortable, but they made a rapid voyage, and were all well when they landed at Greenwich.

Knowing nothing of Lady Bellair's proceedings, they sent Davy to reconnoitre in Portland Place. He brought back word that there was no one in the house but an old woman. So Malcolm took Florimel there. Everything belonging to their late visitors had vanished, and nobody knew where they had gone.

Searching the drawers and cabinets, Malcolm, to his unspeakable delight, found a miniature of his mother, along with one of his father-a younger likeness than he had yet seen. Also he found a few letters of his mother-mostly mere notes in pencil; but neither these nor those of his father which Miss Horn had given him, would he read:

"What right has life over the secrets of death ?" he said. "Or rather, what right have we who sleep over the secrets of those who have waked from their sleep and left the fragments of their dreams behind them?"

Lovingly he laid them together, and burned them to dust flakes.

"My mother shall tell me what she pleases, when I find her," he said. "She shall not reprove me for reading her letters to my father."

They were married, at Wastbeach, both couples in the same ceremony. Immediately after the wedding, the painter and his bride set out for Rome, and the marquis and marchioness went on board the Psyche. For nothing would content Clementina, troubled at the experience of her first voyage, but she must get herself accustomed to the sea, as became the wife of a fisherman; therefore in no way would she journey but on board the Psyche; and as it was the desire of each to begin their married life at home, they sailed direct for Portlossie. After a good voyage, however, they landed, in order to reach home quietly, at Duff Harbour, took horses from there, and arrived at Lossie House late in the evening.

Malcolm had written to the housekeeper to prepare for them the Wizard's Chamber, but to alter nothing on walls or in furniture. That room, he had resolved, should be the first he occupied with his bride. Mrs Courthope was scandalized at the idea of taking an earl's daughter to sleep in the garret, not to mention that the room had for centuries had an ill name; but she had no choice, and therefore contented herself with doing all that lay in the power of woman, under such severe restrictions, to make the dingy old room cheerful.

Alone at length in their somewhat strange quarters, concerning which Malcolm had merely told her that the room was that in which he was born-what place fitter, thought Clementina, wherein to commence the long and wonderful story she hungered to hear. Malcolm would still have delayed it, but she asked question upon question till she had him fairly afloat. He had not gone far, however, before he had to make mention of the stair in the wall, which led from the place where they sat, straight from the house.

"Can there be such a stair in this room?" she asked in surprise.

He rose, took a candle, opened a door, then another, and showed her the first of the steps down which the midwife had carried him, and descending which, twenty years after, his father had come by his death.

"Let us go down," said Clementina.

"Are you not afraid? Look," said Malcolm.

"Afraid, and you with me!" she exclaimed.

"But it is dark, and the steps are broken."

"If it led to Hades, I would go with my fisherman. The only horror would be to be left behind."

"Come then," said Malcolm, "Only you must be very careful." He laid a shawl on her shoulders, and down they went, Malcolm a few steps in front, holding the candle to every step for her, many being broken.

They came at length where the stair ceased in ruin. He leaped down; she stooped, put her hands on his shoulder, and dropped into his arms. Then over the fallen rubbish, out by the groaning door, they went into the moonlight.

Clementina was merry as a child. All was so safe and peaceful with her fisherman! She would not hear of returning. They must have a walk in the moonlight first! So down the steps and the winding path into the valley of the burn, and up to the flower garden they wandered, Clementina telling him how sick the moonlight had made her feel that night she met him first on the Boar's Tail, when his words concerning her revived the conviction that he loved Florimel. At the great stone basin Malcolm set the swan spouting, but the sweet musical jargon of the falling water seemed almost coarse in the soundless diapason of the moonlight. So he stopped it again, and they strolled farther up the garden.

Clementina venturing to remind him of the sexton-like gardener's story of the lady and the hermit's cave, which because of its Scotch, she was unable to follow. Malcolm told her now what John Jack had narrated, adding that the lady was his own mother, and that from the gardener's tale he learned that morning at length how to account for the horror which had seized him on his first entering the cave, as also for his father's peculiar carriage on that occasion: doubtless he then caught a likeness in him to his mother. He then recounted the occurrence circumstantially.

"I have ever since felt ashamed of the weakness," he concluded: "but at this moment I believe I could walk in with perfect coolness."

"We won't try it tonight," said Clementina, and once more turned him from the place, reverencing the shadow he had brought with him from the spirit of his mother.

They walked and sat and talked in the moonlight, for how long neither knew; and when the moon went behind the trees on the cliff, and the valley was left in darkness, but a darkness that seemed alive with the new day soon to be born, they sat yet, lost in a peaceful unveiling of hearts, till a sudden gust of wind roused Malcolm, and looking up he saw that the stars were clouded, and knew that the chill of the morning was drawing near.

He kept that chamber just as it was ever after, and often retired to it for meditation. He never restored the ruinous parts of the stair, and he kept the door at the top carefully closed. But he cleared out the rubbish that choked the place where the stair had led lower down, came upon it again in tolerable preservation a little beneath, and followed it into a passage that ran under the burn, appearing to lead in the direction of the cave behind the Baillies' Barn. Doubtless there was some foundation for the legend of Lord Gernon.

There however, he abandoned the work, thinking of the possibility of a time when employment would be scarce, and his people in want of all he could give them. And when such a time arrived, as arrive it did before they had been two years married, a far more important undertaking was found needful to employ the many who must earn or starve. Then it was that Clementina had the desire of her heart, and began to lay out the money she had been saving for the purpose, in rebuilding the ancient Castle of Colonsay. Its vaults were emptied of rubbish and ruin, the rock faced afresh, walls and towers and battlements raised, until at last, when the loftiest tower seemed to have reached its height, it rose yet higher, and blossomed in radiance; for, topmost crown of all, there, flaming far into the northern night, shone a splendid beacon lamp, to guide the fisherman when his way was hid.

Every summer for years, Florimel and her husband spent weeks in the castle, and many a study the painter made there of the ever changing face of the sea.

Malcolm, as he well might, had such a strong feeling of the power for good of every high souled schoolmaster, that nothing would serve him but Mr Graham must be reinstated. He told the presbytery that if it were not done, he would himself build a school house for him, and the consequence, he said, needed no prediction. Finding, at the same time, that the young man they had put in his place was willing to act as his assistant, he proposed that he should keep the cottage, and all other emoluments of the office, on the sole condition that, when he found he could no longer conscientiously and heartily further the endeavours of Mr Graham, he should say so; whereupon the marquis would endeavour to procure him another appointment; and on these understandings the thing was arranged.

Mr Graham