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CHAPTER XLIV: THE MIND OF THE AUTHOR
The next was the last day of the reading. They must finish the
tale that morning, and on the following set out to return home,
travelling as they had come. Clementina had not the strength of mind
to deny herself that last indulgence--a long four days' ride in
the company of this strangest of attendants. After that, if not
the deluge, yet a few miles of Sahara.
"' It is the opinion of many that he has entered into a Moravian
mission, for the use of which he had previously drawn considerable
sums,'" read Malcolm, and paused, with book half closed.
"Is that all?" asked Florimel.
"Not quite, my lady," he answered. "There isn't much more, but
I was just thinking whether we hadn't come upon something worth a
little reflection--whether we haven't here a window into the mind
of the author of Waverley, whoever he may be, Mr Scott, or another."
"You mean?" said Clementina, interrogatively, and looked up from
her work, but not at the speaker.
"I mean, my lady, that perhaps we here get a glimpse of the author's
own opinions, or feelings rather, perhaps."
"I do not see what of the sort you can find there," returned
Clementina.
"Neither should I, my lady, if Mr Graham had not taught me how to
find Shakspere in his plays. A man's own nature, he used to say,
must lie at the heart of what he does, even though not another man
should be sharp enough to find him there. Not a hypocrite, the most
consummate, he would say, but has his hypocrisy written in every
line of his countenance and motion of his fingers. The heavenly
Lavaters can read it, though the earthly may not be able."
"And you think you can find him out?" said Clementina, dryly.
"Not the hypocrite, my lady, but Mr Scott here. He is only round
a single corner. And one thing is--he believes in a God."
"How do you make that out?"
"He means this Mr Tyrrel for a fine fellow, and on the whole approves
of him--does he not, my lady?"
"Certainly."
"Of course all that duelling is wrong. But then Mr Scott only half
disapproves of it.--And it is almost a pity it is wrong," remarked
Malcolm with a laugh; "it is such an easy way of settling some
difficult things. Yet I hate it. It's so cowardly. I may be a
better shot than the other, and know it all the time. He may know
it too, and have twice my courage. And I may think him in the
wrong, when he knows himself in the right.--There is one man I
have felt as if I should like to kill. When I was a boy I killed
the cats that ate my pigeons."
A look of horror almost distorted Lady Clementina's countenance.
"I don't know what to say next, my lady," he went on, with a smile,
"because I have no way of telling whether you looked shocked for
the cats I killed, or the pigeons they killed, or the man I would
rather see killed than have him devour more of my--white doves,"
he concluded sadly, with a little shake of the head.--"But, please
God," he resumed, "I shall manage to keep them from him, and let
him live to be as old as Methuselah if he can, even if he should
grow in cunning and wickedness all the time. I wonder how he will
feel when he comes to see what a sneaking cat he is. But this is
not what we set out for.--Mr Tyrrel, then, the author's hero,
joins the Moravians at last."
"What are they?" questioned Clementina.
"Simple, good, practical Christians, I believe," answered Malcolm.
"But he only does it when disappointed in love."
"No, my lady; he is not disappointed. The lady is only dead."
Clementina stared a moment--then dropped her head as if she
understood. Presently she raised it again and said,
"But, according to what you said the other day, in doing so he was
forsaking altogether the duties of the station in which God had
called him."
"That is true. It would have been a far grander thing to do his
duty where he was, than to find another place and another duty. An
earldom allotted is better than a mission preferred."
"And at least you must confess," interrupted Clementina, "that he
only took to religion because he was unhappy."
"Certainly, my lady, it is the nobler thing to seek God in the days
of gladness, to look up to him in trustful bliss when the sun is
shining. But if a man be miserable, if the storm is coming down
on him, what is he to do? There is nothing mean in seeking God
then, though it would have been nobler to seek him before.--But
to return to the matter in hand: the author of Waverley makes his
noble hearted hero, whom assuredly he had no intention of disgracing,
turn Moravian; and my conclusion from it is that, in his judgment,
nobleness leads in the direction of religion; that he considers
it natural for a noble mind to seek comfort there for its deepest
sorrows."
"Well, it may be so; but what is religion without consistency in
action?" said Clementina.
"Nothing," answered Malcolm.
"Then how can you, professing to believe as you do, cherish such
feelings towards any man as you have just been confessing?"
"I don't cherish them, my lady. But I succeed in avoiding hate better
than suppressing contempt, which perhaps is the worse of the two.
There may be some respect in hate."
Here he paused, for here was a chance that was not likely to recur.
He might say before two ladies what he could not say before one.
If he could but rouse Florimel's indignation! Then at any suitable
time only a word more would be needful to direct it upon the villain.
Clementina's eyes continued fixed upon him. At length he spoke.
"I will try to make two pictures in your mind, my lady, if you will
help me to paint them. In my mind they are not painted pictures
--A long seacoast, my lady, and a stormy night;--the sea horses
rushing in from the northeast, and the snowflakes beginning to
fall. On the margin of the sea a long dune or sandbank, and on the
top of it, her head bare, and her thin cotton dress nearly torn
from her by the wind, a young woman, worn and white, with an old
faded tartan shawl tight about her shoulders, and the shape of a
baby inside it, upon her arm."
"Oh! she doesn't mind the cold," said Florimel. "When I was there,
I didn't mind it a bit."
"She does not mind the cold," answered Malcolm; "she is far too
miserable for that."
"But she has no business to take the baby out on such a night,"
continued Florimel, carelessly critical. "You ought to have painted
her by the fireside. They have all of them firesides to sit at. I
have seen them through the windows many a time."
"Shame or cruelty had driven her from it," said Malcolm, "and there
she was."
"Do you mean you saw her yourself wandering about?" asked Clementina.
"Twenty times, my lady."
Clementina was silent.
"Well, what comes next?" said Florimel.
"Next comes a young gentleman;--but this is a picture in another
frame, although of the same night;--a young gentleman in evening
dress, sipping his madeira, warm and comfortable, in the bland
temper that should follow the best of dinners, his face beaming with
satisfaction after some boast concerning himself, or with silent
success in the concoction of one or two compliments to have at hand
when he joins the ladies in the drawing room."
"Nobody can help such differences," said Florimel. "If there were
nobody rich, who would there be to do anything for the poor? It's
not the young gentleman's fault that he is better born and has more
money than the poor girl."
"No," said Malcolm; "but what if the poor girl has the young
gentleman's child to carry about from morning to night."
"Oh, well! I suppose she's paid for it," said Florimel, whose
innocence must surely have been supplemented by some stupidity,
born of her flippancy.
"Do be quiet, Florimel," said Clementina. "You don't know what you
are talking about."
Her face was in a glow, and one glance at it set Florimel's in a
flame. She rose without a word, but with a look of mingled confusion
and offence, and walked away. Clementina gathered her work together.
But ere she followed her, she turned to Malcolm, looked him calmly
in the face, and said,
"No one can blame you for hating such a man."
"Indeed, my lady, but some one would--the only one for whose
praise or blame we ought to care more than a straw or two.
He tells us we are neither to judge nor to hate. But--"
"I cannot stay and talk with you," said Clementina. "You must pardon
me if I follow your mistress."
Another moment and he would have told her all, in the hope of her
warning Florimel. But she was gone.
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