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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 thenceforward lived in the House, a spiritual father to
the whole family, reverenced by all, ever greeted with gladness,
ever obeyed. The spiritual dignity and simplicity, the fine sense
and delicate feeling of the man, rendered him a saving presence in
the place; and Clementina felt as if one of the ancient prophets,
blossomed into a Christian, was the glory of their family and
house. Like a perfect daughter, she watched him, tried to discover
preferences of which he might not himself be aware, and often waited
upon him with her own hands.
There was an ancient building connected with the house, divided
now for many years into barn and dairy, but evidently the chapel
of the monastery: this Malcolm soon set about reconverting. It made
a lovely chapel--too large for the household, but not too large
for its congregation upon Wednesday evenings, when many of the
fishermen and their families, and not a few of the inhabitants of
the upper town, with occasionally several farm servants from the
neighbourhood, assembled to listen devoutly to the fervent and loving
expostulations and rousings, or the tender consolings and wise
instructions of the master, as every one called him. The hold he
had of their hearts was firm, and his influence on their consciences
far reaching.
When there was need of conference, or ground for any wide expostulation,
the marquis would call a meeting in the chapel; but this occurred
very seldom. Now and then the master, sometimes the marquis himself,
would use it for a course of lectures or a succession of readings
from some specially interesting book; and in what had been the
sacristy they gathered a small library for the use of the neighbourhood.
No meeting was held there of a Sunday, for although the clergyman
was the one person to whom all his life the marquis never came any
nearer, he was not the less careful to avoid everything that might
rouse contention or encourage division.
"I find the doing of the will of God," he would say, "leaves me
no time for disputing about his plans--I do not say for thinking
about them."
Not therefore, however, would he waive the exercise of the inborn
right of teaching, and anybody might come to the house and see the
master on Sunday evenings. As to whether people went to church or
stayed away, he never troubled himself in the least; and no more
did the schoolmaster.
The chapel had not been long finished when he had an organ built in
it. Lady Lossie played upon it. Almost every evening, at a certain
hour, she played for a while; the door was always open, and any
one who pleased might sit down and listen.
Gradually the feeling of the community, from the strengthening and
concentrating influence of the House, began to bear upon offenders;
and any whose conduct had become in the least flagrant soon felt
that the general eye was upon them, and that gradually the human tide
was falling from them, and leaving them prisoned in a rocky basin
on a barren shore. But at the same time, all three of the powers at
the House were watching to come in the moment there was a chance;
and what with the marquis's warnings, his wife's encouragements,
and the master's expostulations, there was no little hope of the
final recovery of several who would otherwise most likely have sunk
deeper and deeper.
The marchioness took Lizzy for her personal attendant, and had her
boy much about her; so that by the time she had children of her
own, she had some genuine and worthy notion of what a child was, and
what could and ought to be done for the development of the divine
germ that lay in the human egg; and had found that the best she
could do for any child, or indeed anybody, was to be good herself.
Rose married a young fisherman, and made a brave wife and mother.
To the end of her days she regarded the marquis almost as a being
higher than human, an angel that had found and saved her.
Kelpie had a foal, and, apparently in consequence, grew so much
more gentle that at length Malcolm consented that Clementina, who
was an excellent horsewoman, should mount her. After a few attempts
to unseat her, not of the most determined kind however, Kelpie, on
her part, consented to carry her, and ever after seemed proud of
having a mistress that could ride. Her foal turned out a magnificent
horse. Malcolm did not allow him to do anything that could be
called work before he was eight years old, and had the return at
the other end, for when Goblin was thirty he rode him still, and
to judge by appearances, might but for an accident have ridden him
ten years more.
It was not long ere people began to remark that no one now ever
heard the piper utter the name Campbell. An ill bred youth once
--it was well for him that Malcolm was not near--dared the evil
word in his presence: a cloud swept across the old man's face, but
he held his peace; and to the day of his death, which arrived in
his ninety-first year, it never crossed his lips. He died with the
Lossie pipes on his bed, Malcolm on one side of him, and Clementina
on the other.
Some of my readers may care to know that Phemy and Davy were
married, and made the quaintest, oldest fashioned little couple,
with hearts which king or beggar might equally have trusted.
Malcolm's relations with the fisher folk, founded as they were in
truth and open uprightness, were not in the least injured by his
change of position. He made it a point to be always at home during
the herring fishing. Whatever might be going on in London, the
marquis and marchioness, their family and household, were sure
to leave in time for the commencement of that. Those who admired
Malcolm, of whom there were not a few even in Vanity Fair, called
him the fisher king: the wags called him the kingfisher, and laughed
at the oddity of his taste in preferring what he called his duty
to the pleasures of the season. But the marquis found even the
hen pecked Partan a nobler and more elevating presence than any
strutting platitude of Bond Street. And when he was at home, he was
always about amongst the people. Almost every day he would look in
at some door in the Seaton, and call out a salutation to the busy
housewife--perhaps go in and sit down for a minute. Now he would
be walking with this one, now talking with that--oftenest with
Blue Peter; and sometimes both their wives would be with them,
upon the shore, or in the grounds. Nor was there a family meal to
which any one or all together of the six men whom he had set over
the Seaton and Scaurnose would not have been welcomed by the marquis
and his Clemency. The House was head and heart of the whole district.
A conventional visitor was certain to feel very shruggish at first
sight of the terms on which the marquis was with "persons of that
sort;" but often such a one came to allow that it was no great
matter: the persons did not seem to presume unpleasantly, and,
notwithstanding his atrocious training, the marquis was after all
a very good sort of fellow--considering.
In the third year he launched a strange vessel. Her tonnage was
two hundred, but she was built like a fishing boat. She had great
stowage forward and below: if there was a large take, boat after
boat could empty its load into her, and go back and draw its nets
again. But this was not the original design in her.
The after half of her deck was parted off with a light rope rail,
was kept as white as holystone could make it, and had a brass railed
bulwark. She was steered with a wheel, for more room; the top of
the binnacle was made sloping, to serve as a lectern; there were
seats all round the bulwarks; and she was called the Clemency.
For more than two years he had provided training for the fittest
youths he could find amongst the fishers, and now he had a pretty
good band playing on wind instruments, able to give back to God a
shadow of his own music. The same formed the Clemency's crew. And
every Sunday evening the great fishing boat with the marquis, and
almost always the marchioness on board, and the latter never without
a child or children, led out from the harbour such of the boats as
were going to spend the night on the water.
When they reached the ground, all the other boats gathered about
the great boat, and the chief men came on board, and Malcolm stood
up betwixt the wheel and the binnacle, and read--always from the
gospel, and generally words of Jesus, and talked to them, striving
earnestly to get the truth alive into their hearts. Then he would
pray aloud to the living God, as one so living that they could
not see him, so one with them that they could not behold him. When
they rose from their knees; man after man dropped into his boat,
and the fleet scattered wide over the waters to search them for
their treasure.
Then the little ones were put to bed; and Malcolm and Clementina
would sit on the deck, reading and talking, till the night fell,
when they too went below, and slept in peace. But if ever a boat
wanted help, or the slightest danger arose, the first thing was to
call the marquis, and he was on deck in a moment.
In the morning, when a few of the boats had gathered, they would
make for the harbour again, but now with full blast of praising
trumpets and horns, the waves seeming to dance to the well ordered
noise divine. Or if the wind was contrary, or no wind blew, the
lightest laden of the boats would take the Clemency in tow, and,
with frequent change of rowers, draw her softly back to the harbour.
For such Monday mornings, the marquis wrote a little song, and his
Clemency made an air to it, and harmonized it for the band. Here
is the last stanza of it:
Like the fish that brought the coin,
We in ministry will join--
Bring what pleases thee the best;
Help from each to all the rest.
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