George MacDonald

“ Knowing herself a nobody, she now first began to be a somebody. She had been dreaming pleasant but bad dreams: she woke, and here was a lovely, unspeakably blessed and good reality, which had been waiting for her all the time on the threshold of her sleep! She was baptized into it with the tears of sorrow and shame. She had been a fool, but now she knew it, and was going to be wise.
“Will you come to your brother, Florimel?” said Malcolm tenderly, holding out his arms.
Lenorme raised her. She went softly to him, and laid herself on his bosom. ”

“ As their heads rose over the top, and the sky-night above and the sea-night beneath rolled themselves out and rushed silently together, Malcolm said, as if thinking aloud:
“Thus shall we meet death and the unknown, and the new that breaks from the bosom of the invisible will be better than the old upon which the gates close behind us. The Son of man is content with my future, and I am content.”
There was a peace in the words that troubled Clementina: he wanted no more than he had—this cold, imperturbable, devout fisherman! ”

“ But I have done nothing to what I could do now, if only my heart lay safe in the port of peace:—you know where alone that is for me my—lady marchioness. And you know too that the names of great painters go down with honour from generation to generation, when my lord this or my lord that is remembered only as a label to the picture that makes the painter famous. I am not a great painter yet, but I will be one if you will be good to me. And men shall say, when they look on your portrait, in ages to come: No wonder he was such a painter when he had such a woman to paint. ”

“ Clementina stood waiting him, like a moon that could hold her own in the face of the sun.
“Malcolm,” she said, “I have been watching all day, but have not found a single opportunity of speaking to your mistress as you wished. But to tell the truth, I am not sorry, for the more I think about it, the less I see what to say. That another does not like a person, can have little weight with one who does, and I know nothing against him. I wish you would release me from my promise. It is such an ugly thing to speak to one’s hostess to the disadvantage of a fellow-guest!” ”

“ Florimel, I loved my sister, and longed for her goodness. But she has foiled all my endeavours. She has not loved or followed the truth. She has been proud and disdainful, and careless of right. Yourself young and pure, and naturally recoiling from evil, you have yet cast from you the devotion of a noble, gifted, large-hearted, and great-souled man, for the miserable preference of the smallest, meanest, vilest of men. Nor that only! for with him you have sided against the woman he most bitterly wrongs: and therein you wrong the nature and the God of women. ”

“ 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 anyone 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I say then, that Malcolm was always thinking about Lady Clementina when he was not thinking about something he had to think about, have I not said nearly enough on the matter? Should I ever dream of attempting to set forth what love is, in such a man for such a woman? There are comparatively few that have more than the glimmer of a notion of what love means. God only knows how grandly, how passionately yet how calmly, how divinely the man and the woman he has made, might, may, shall love each other. ”

“ Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest splendour. It is like the love that loss has purified.
Such, however, were not the thoughts that at the moment occupied the mind of Malcolm Colonsay. Indeed, the loveliness of the morning was but partially visible from the spot where he stood—the stable-yard of Lossie House, ancient and roughly paved. ”

“ The spirit has its risings and settings of sun and moon, its seasons, its clouds and stars, its solstices, its tides, its winds, its storms, its earthquakes—infinite vitality in endless fluctuation. To rule these changes, Florimel had neither the power that comes of love, nor the strength that comes of obedience. What of conscience she had was not yet conscience toward God, which is the guide to freedom, but conscience toward society, which is the slave of a fool. It was no wonder then that Lenorme, believing—hoping she loved him, should find her hard to understand. ”

“ Let her up, I command you.”
“I dare not, my lady. If she were to get loose she would tear your ladyship to pieces.”
“I will take my chance.”
“But I will not my lady. I know the danger, and have to take care of you who do not. There is no occasion to be uneasy about the mare. She is tolerably comfortable. I am not hurting her—not much. Your ladyship does not reflect how strong a horse’s skull is. And you see what great powerful breaths she draws!”
“She is in agony,” cried Clementina.
“Not in the least, my lady. She is only balked of her own way, and does not like it.” ”

“ Lively as any new-born butterfly, not like a butterfly’s, flitting and hovering, was her flight, for still, like one that longed, she sped and strained and flew. The joy of bare life swelled in Florimel’s bosom. She looked up, she looked around, she breathed deep. The cloudy anger that had rushed upon her like a watching tiger the moment she waked, fell back, and left her soul a clear mirror to reflect God’s dream of a world. She turned, and saw Malcolm at the tiller, and the cloudy wrath sprang upon her. ”

“ 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 for ever trying to get out at her feet. ”

“ As she lay snug and warm, with the cool breath of the sea on her face, a half sleep came over Clementina, and she half dreamed that she was voyaging in a ship of the air, through infinite regions of space, with a destination too glorious to be known. The herring-boat was a living splendour of strength and speed, its sails were as the wings of a will, in place of the instruments of a force, and softly as mightily it bore them through the charmed realms of dreamland towards the ideal of the soul. ”

“ Arrived at the entrance to her own close, Lizzy next bade them good night, and Clementina and Malcolm were left.
And now drew near the full power, the culmination of the mounting enchantment of the night for Malcolm. When once the Scaurnose people should have passed them, they would be alone—alone as in the spaces between the stars. There would not be a living soul on the shore for hours. From the harbour the nearest way to the House was by the sea-gate, but where was the haste—with the lovely night around them, private as a dream shared only by two? ”

“ Florimel breathed as if she never could have enough of the sweet wind; each breath gave her all the boundless region whence it blew; she gazed as if she would fill her soul with the sparkling gray of the water, the sun-melted blue of the sky, and the incredible green of the flat shores. For minutes she would be silent, her parted lips revealing her absorbed delight, then break out in a volley of questions, now addressing Malcolm, now Travers. She tried Davy too, but Davy knew nothing except his duty here. ”

“ To herald his suit with his rank would be to insult her, declaring that he regarded her theories of humanity as wordy froth. And what a chance of proving her truth would he not deprive her of, if, as he approached her, he called on the marquis to supplement the man!—But what then was the man, fisherman or marquis, to dare even himself to such a glory as the Lady Clementina? —This much of a man at least, answered his waking dignity, that he could not condescend to be accepted as Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, knowing he would have been rejected as Malcolm MacPhail, fisherman and groom. ”

“ I tell you, Lady Clementina,” continued Malcolm, rising, and approaching her a step or two, “if I had not the hope of one day being good like God himself, if I thought there was no escape out of the wrong and badness I feel within me and know I am not able to rid myself of without supreme help, not all the wealth and honours of the world could reconcile me to life.” ”