George MacDonald

“ And now you'll hate me out and out. And the doctor says if you die he'll have it all searched into, and Miss Caley she look at me as if she suspect me of a hand in it; and they won't let alone till they've got me hanged for it; and it's all along of love of you; and I tell you the truth, Mr. MacPhail, and you can do anything with me you like — I don't care — only you won't let them hang me, will you? Oh, please don't!" She said all this with clasped hands and the tears streaming down her face.
Malcolm's impulse was of course to draw her to him and comfort her, but something warned him. ”

“ The world is full of little deaths — deaths of all sorts and sizes, rather let me say. For this one I was prepared. The good summer-land calls you to its bosom, and you must go."
"Come with me," cried Clementina, her eye's eager with the light of the sudden thought, while her heart reproached her grievously that only now first had it come to her.
"A man must not leave the most irksome work for the most peaceful pleasure," answered the schoolmaster. "I am able to live — yes, and do my work — without you, my lady," he added with a smile, "though I shall miss you sorely." ”

“ Our history moves in cycles, it is true, ever returning toward the point whence it started; but it is in the imperfect circles of a spiral it moves: it returns, but ever to a point above the former: even the second childhood, at which the fool jeers, is the better, the truer, the fuller childhood, growing strong to cast off altogether, with the husk of its own enveloping age, that of its family, its country, the world as well. Age is not all decay: it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
When Malcolm lifted his head the sun had gone down. ”

“ While Malcolm talked, Lenorme went on painting diligently, listening and saying nothing. When he had thus ended a pause of some duration followed.
"A goddess has a right to claim that one thing — has she not, Mr. Lenorme?" said Malcolm at length, winding up a silent train of thought aloud.
"What thing?" asked Lenorme, still without lifting his head.
"Purity in the arms a man holds out to her," answered Malcolm.
"Certainly," replied Lenorme, with a sort of mechanical absoluteness.
"And according to your picture every woman whom a man loves is a goddess — the goddess of nature?" ”

“ Clementina's work now lay on her lap and her hands on her work, while her eyes at one time gazed on the grass at her feet, at another searching Malcolm's face with a troubled look. The light of Malcolm's candle was beginning to penetrate into her dusky room, the power of his faith to tell upon the weakness of her unbelief. There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve. ”

“ They saw her come stealing out of the thin dark like a thought half thought, and go gliding along the shore like a sea-ghost over the dusky water, faint, uncertain, noiseless, glimmering. It could be no other than the Fisky! Both their lady and their friend Malcolm must be on board, they were certain, for how could the one of them come without the other? and doubtless the marchioness — whom they all remembered as a good-humored, handsome girl, ready to speak to any and everybody — would immediately deliver them from the hateful red-nosed ogre, her factor. ”

“ Lenorme looked at her. He had often seen her like this before, and knew that the shell was charged and the fuse lighted. But within lay a mixture even more explosive than he suspected; for not merely was there more of shame and fear and perplexity mingled with her love than he understood, but she was conscious of having now been false to him, and that rendered her temper dangerous. Lenorme had already suffered severely from the fluctuations of her moods. They had been almost too much for him. He could endure them, he thought, to all eternity if he had her to himself, safe and sure ”

“ I ought; only — by Jove! — you have already looked deeper into the whole thing than I."
"There may be things to account for that on both sides," said Malcolm. "But one word more to relieve my brain: if you would embody the full meaning of the parable, you must not be content that the mystery is there: you must show in your painting that you feel it there; you must paint the invisible veil that no hand can lift, for there it is, and there it ever will be, though Isis herself raise it from morning to morning." ”

“ The relation between him and his late schoolmaster was indeed of the strongest and closest. Long before Malcolm was born, and ever since, had Alexander Graham loved Malcolm's mother, but not until within the last few months had he learned that Malcolm was the son of Griselda Campbell. The discovery was to the schoolmaster like the bursting out of a known flower on an unknown plant. He knew then, not why he had loved the boy — for he loved every one of his pupils more or less — but why he had loved him with such a peculiar tone of affection. ”

“ Blue Peter turned away with a sigh. The sounds of English speech from the lips of Malcolm, addressed to himself, seemed vaguely to indicate the opening of a gulf between them, destined ere long to widen to the whole social width between a fisherman and a marquis, and swallow up in it not only old memories, but later friendship and confidence. A shadow of bitterness crossed the poor fellow's mind, and in it the seed of distrust began to strike root, for nothing but that a newer had been substituted for an older form of the same speech and language. ”

“ Caley's face, then, with its unsaintly illumination, gave Malcolm something to think about as he sat there upon Honor, the new horse. Clearly, she had had a triumph; what could it be? The nature of the woman was not altogether unknown to him even from the first, and he could not for months go on meeting her occasionally in passages and on stairs without learning to understand his own instinctive dislike: it was plain the triumph was not in good. It was plain too that it was in something which had that very moment occurred, and could hardly have to do with any one but her mistress. ”

“ Of its material self we want no more: its real self we have, and it sits at the fountain of our tears. Malcolm hid his face from the source of his gladness and worshipped the source of that source.
Rare as they are at any given time, there have been. I think, such youths in all ages of the world — youths capable of glorying in the fountain whence issues the torrent of their youthful might. Nor is the reality of their early worship blasted for us by any mistral of doubt that may afterward blow upon their spirit from the icy region of the understanding. ”

“ The air and the light seemed one, and Malcolm felt as if his soul were breathing the light into its very depths, while his body was drinking the soft spicy wind. For Kelpie, she was as full of life as if she had been meant for a winged horse, but by some accident of nature the wing-cases had never opened, and the wing-life was forever trying to get out at her feet. The consequent restlessness, where there was plenty of space as here, caused Malcolm no more discomposure than, in his old fishing-days, a gale with plenty of sea-room. ”

“ Malcolm's main thought was, What a grand thing it would be to rouse a woman like Clementina to lift her head into the
⁠regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth!
If any one think that love has no right to talk religion, I answer for Malcolm at least, asking, Whereof shall a man speak if not out of the abundance of his heart? That man knows little either of love or of religion who imagines they ought to be kept apart. ”

“ Florimel turned again toward the sea. Presently she caught sight of Clementina glimpsing through the pines, now in glimmer and now in gloom, as she sped swiftly to the shore, and after a few short minutes of disappearance saw her emerge upon the space of sand where sat Malcolm on the head of the demoness. But, alas! she could only see: she could hardly even hear the sound of a tide.
"MacPhail, are you a man?" cried Clementina, startling him so that in another instant the floundering mare would have been on her feet. ”

“ Answer me that."
"My lady, I have millions more than you, for I have been gathering the crumbs under my Master's table for thirty years."
"You are a king," answered Clementina. "But a king needs a handmaiden somewhere in his house: that let me be in yours. No, I will be proud, and assert my rights: I am your daughter. If I am not, why am I here? Do you not remember telling me that the adoption of God meant a closer relation than any other fatherhood, even his own first fatherhood, could signify? You cannot cast me off if you would. Why should you be poor when I am rich? ”

“ What changes, what metamorphoses, transformations, purifications, glorifications, must this or that love undergo ere it take its eternal place in the kingdom of heaven, through all its changes yet remaining, in its one essential root, the same, let the coming redemption reveal. The hope of all honest lovers will lead them to the vision. Only let them remember that love must dwell in the will as well as in the heart.
But whatever the nature of Malcolm's influence upon Lady Clementina, she resented it, thinking toward and speaking to him repellently. ”

“ The sound of their wheels, pausing in swift revolution with the clangor of iron hoofs on rough stones at the door of the chapel, refreshed the diaconal heart like the sound of water in the desert. For the first time in the memory of the oldest the dayspring of success seemed on the point of breaking over Hope Chapel. The ladies were ushered in by Mr. Marshal himself, to Clementina's disgust and Florimel's amusement, with much the same attention as his own shop-walker would have shown to carriage-customers. How could a man who taught light and truth be found in such a mean entourage? ”

“ Florimel drew close to his side, laid her hand on his arm and looked in his face with a witching entreaty. "We have the present, Raoul," she said.
"So has the butterfly," answered Lenorme; "but I had rather be the caterpillar with a future. Why don't you put a stop to the man's lovemaking? He can't love you or any woman. He does not know what love means. It makes me ill to hear him when he thinks he is paying you irresistible compliments. They are so silly! so mawkish! Good heavens, Florimel! can you imagine that smile every day and always? ”

“ Place Alexander ille magnus beside Malcolm's friend Epictetus, ille servorum servus — take his crutch from the slave and set the hero upon his Bucephalus, but set them alone and in a desert — which will prove the great man? which the unchangeable? The question being what the man himself shall or shall not be, shall or shall not feel, shall or shall not recognize as of himself and troubling the motions of his being, Alexander will prove a mere earth-bubble, Epictetus a cavern in which pulses the tide of the eternal and infinite Sea. ”

“ Every motion of the horses under them was like a throb of the heart of the earth, every bound like a sigh of her bliss. Florimel shouted almost like a boy with ecstasy, and Clementina's moonlight went very near changing into sunlight as she gazed and breathed and knew that she was alive.
They started without Malcolm, for he must always put his mistress up and then go back to the stable for Kelpie. In a moment they were in the wood, crossing its shadows. It was like swimming their horses through a sea of shadows. ”

“ The words of the boy pleased Malcolm more than he judged it wise to manifest. He looked hard at Davy. There was little to he seen in his face except the best and only thing — truth. It shone from his found pale-blue eyes; it conquered the self-assertion of his unhappy nose; it seemed to glow in every freckle of his sunburnt cheeks as earnestly he returned Malcolm's gaze.
"But," said Malcolm, almost satisfied, "how is this, Travers? I never gave you any instructions about the boy." ”

“ A curious sense of impropriety in the state of things bewildered her — she and her friend talking thus in the moonlight on the seashore, doing nothing, with her groom — and such a groom! — she asking him to sing again, and he addressing them both with a remark on the beauty of the night. She had braved the world a good deal, but she did not choose to brave it where nothing was to be had, and she was too honest to say to herself that the world would never know — that there was nothing to brave: she was not one to do that in secret to which she would not hold her face. ”

“ Her earthly birth held her to the earth, but the ocean upbore her and the breath of God drove her on. Little thought Florimel to what she hurried her. A queen in her own self-sufficiency and condescension, she could not suspect how little of real queendom, noble and self-sustaining, there was in her being; for not a soul of man or woman whose every atom leans not upon its father-fact in God can sustain itself when the outer wall of things begins to tumble toward the centre, crushing it in on every side.
During the voyage no further allusion was made by either to what had passed. ”