THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE
by George MacDonald
CONTENTS.
I. THE STABLE-YARD
II. THE LIBRARY
III. MISS HORN
IV. KELPIE’S AIRING
V. LIZZY FINDLAY
VI. MR CRATHIE
VII. BLUE PETER
VIII. VOYAGE TO LONDON
IX. LONDON STREETS
X. THE TEMPEST
XI. DEMON AND THE PIPES
XII. A NEW LIBRARY
XIII. TWO CONVERSATIONS
XIV. FLORIMEL
XV. PORTLOSSIE
XVI. ST JAMES THE APOSTLE
XVII. A DIFFERENCE
XVIII. LORD LIFTORE
XIX. KELPIE IN LONDON
XX. BLUE PETER
XXI. MR GRAHAM
XXII. RICHMOND PARK
XXIII. PAINTER AND GROOM
XXIV. A LADY
XXV. THE PSYCHE
XXVI. THE SCHOOLMASTER
XXVII. THE PREACHER
XXVIII. THE PORTRAIT
XXIX. AN EVIL OMEN
XXX. A QUARREL
XXXI. THE TWO DAIMONS
XXXII. A CHASTISEMENT
XXXIII. LIES
XXXIV. AN OLD ENEMY
XXXV. THE EVIL GENIUS
XXXVI. CONJUNCTIONS
XXXVII. AN INNOCENT PLOT
XXXVIII. THE JOURNEY
XXXIX. DISCIPLINE
XL. MOONLIGHT
XLI. THE SWIFT
XLII. ST RONAN’S WELL
XLIII. A PERPLEXITY
XLIV. THE MIND OF THE AUTHOR
XLV. THE RIDE HOME
XLVI. PORTLAND PLACE
XLVII. PORTLOSSIE AND SCAURNOSE
XLVIII. TORTURE
XLIX. THE PHILTRE
L. THE DEMONESS AT BAY
LI. THE PSYCHE
LII. HOPE CHAPEL
LIII. A NEW PUPIL
LIV. THE FEY FACTOR
LV. THE WANDERER
LVI. MID-OCEAN
LVII. THE SHORE
LVIII. THE TRENCH
LIX. THE PEACEMAKER
LX. AN OFFERING
LXI. THOUGHTS
LXII. THE DUNE
LXIII. CONFESSION OF SIN
LXIV. A VISITATION
LXV. THE EVE OF THE CRISIS
LXVI. SEA
LXVII. SHORE
LXVIII. THE CREW OF THE BONNIE ANNIE
LXIX. LIZZY’S BABY
LXX. THE DISCLOSURE
LXXI. THE ASSEMBLY
LXXII. KNOTTED STRANDS
CHAPTER I.
THE STABLE-YARD.
It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in which
it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of summer. 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. It was a hundred years since
the stones had been last relaid and levelled: none of the horses of
the late Marquis minded it but one--her whom the young man in Highland
dress was now grooming--and she would have fidgeted had it been an oak
floor. The yard was a long and wide space, with two-storied buildings
on all sides of it. In the centre of one of them rose the clock, and
the morning sun shone red on its tarnished gold. It was an ancient
clock, but still capable of keeping good time--good enough, at least,
for all the requirements of the house, even when the family was at
home, seeing it never stopped, and the church clock was always ordered
by it.
It not only set the time, but seemed also to set the fashion of the
place, for the whole aspect of it was one of wholesome, weather-beaten,
time-worn existence. One of the good things that accompany good blood
is that its possessor does not much mind a shabby coat. Tarnish and
lichens and water-wearing, a wavy house-ridge, and a few families of
worms in the wainscot do not annoy the marquis as they do the city man
who has just bought a little place in the country. When an old family
ceases to go lovingly with nature, I see no reason why it should go
any longer. An old tree is venerable, and an old picture precious to
the soul, but an old house, on which has been laid none but loving and
respectful hands, is dear to the very heart. Even an old barn door,
with the carved initials of hinds and maidens of vanished centuries,
has a place of honour in the cabinet of the poet’s brain. It was
centuries since Lossie House had begun to grow shabby--and beautiful;
and he to whom it now belonged was not one to discard the reverend for
the neat, or let the vanity of possession interfere with the grandeur
of inheritance.
Beneath the tarnished gold of the clock, flushed with the red winter
sun, he was at this moment grooming the coat of a powerful black mare.
That he had not been brought up a groom was pretty evident from the
fact that he was not hissing; but that he was Marquis of Lossie there
was nothing about him to show. The mare looked dangerous. Every now
and then she cast back a white glance of the one visible eye. But the
youth was on his guard, and as wary as fearless in his handling of her.
When at length he had finished the toilet which her restlessness--for
her four feet were never all still at once upon the stones--had
considerably protracted, he took from his pocket a lump of sugar, and
held it for her to bite at with her angry-looking teeth.
It was a keen frost, but in the sun the icicles had begun to drop. The
roofs in the shadow were covered with hoar frost; wherever there was
shadow there was whiteness. But for all the cold, there was keen life
in the air, and yet keener life in the two animals, biped and quadruped.
As they thus stood, the one trying to sweeten the other’s relation to
himself, if he could not hope much for her general temper, a man, who
looked half farmer, half lawyer, appeared on the opposite side of the
court in the shadow.
“You are spoiling that mare, MacPhail,” he cried.
“I canna weel du that, sir; she canna be muckle waur,” said the youth.
“It’s whip and spur she wants, not sugar.”
“She has had, and sall hae baith, time aboot (_in turn_); and I houp
they’ll du something for her in time, sir.”
“Her time shall be short here, anyhow. She’s not worth the sugar you
give her.”
“Eh, sir! luik at her,” said Malcolm, in a tone of expostulation, as he
stepped back a few paces and regarded her with admiring eyes. “Saw ye
ever sic legs? an’ sic a neck? an’ sic a heid? an’ sic fore an’ hin’
quarters? She’s a’ bonny but the temper o’ her, an’ that she canna help
like the likes o’ you an’ me.”
“She’ll be the death o’ somebody some day. The sooner we get rid of her
the better. Just look at that,” he added, as the mare laid back her
ears and made a vicious snap at nothing in particular.
“She was a favourite o’ my--maister, the marquis,” returned the youth,
“an’ I wad ill like to pairt wi’ her.”
“I’ll take any offer in reason for her,” said the factor. “You’ll just
ride her to Forres market next week, and see what you can get for her.
I do think she’s quieter since you took her in hand.”
“I’m sure she is--but it winna laist a day. The moment I lea’ her,
she’ll be as ill ’s ever,” said the youth. “She has a kin’ o’ a likin’
to me, ’cause I gi’e her sugar, an’ she canna cast me; but she’s no
a bit better i’ the hert o’ her yet. She’s an oonsanctifeed brute. I
cudna think o’ sellin’ her like this.”
“Lat them ’at buys tak tent (_beware_),” said the factor.
“Ow ay! lat them; I dinna objec’; gien only they ken what she’s like
afore they buy her,” rejoined Malcolm.
The factor burst out laughing. To his judgment the youth had spoken
like an idiot.
“We’ll not send you to sell,” he said. “Stoat shall go with you, and
you shall have nothing to do but hold the mare and your own tongue.”
“Sir,” said Malcolm, seriously, “ye dinna mean what ye say? Ye said
yersel’ she wad be the deith o’ somebody, an’ to sell her ohn tell’t
what she’s like wad be to caw the saxt comman’ment clean to shivers.”
“That may be good doctrine i’ the kirk, my lad, but it’s pure heresy
i’ the horse-market. No, no! You buy a horse as you take a wife-- for
better for worse, as the case may be. A woman’s not bound to tell her
faults when a man wants to marry her. If she keeps off the worst of
them afterwards, it’s all he has a right to look for.”
“Hoot, sir! there’s no a pair o’ parallel lines in a’ the compairison,”
returned Malcolm. “Mistress Kelpie here’s e’en ower ready to confess
her fauts, an’ that by giein’ a taste o’ them; she winna bide to be
speired; but for haudin’ aff o’ them efter the bargain’s made--ye ken
she’s no even responsible for the bargain. An’ gien ye expec’ me to
haud my tongue aboot them--faith, Maister Crathie, I wad as sune think
o’ sellin’ a rotten boat to Blue Peter. Gien the man ’at has her to see
till, dinna ken to luik oot for a storm o’ iron shune or lang teeth ony
moment, his wife may be a widow that same market nicht. An’ forbye,
it’s again’ the aucht comman’ment as weel ’s the saxt. There’s nae
exception there in regaird o’ horse flesh. We maun be honest i’ that
as weel ’s i’ corn or herrin’, or onything ither ’at’s coft an’ sell’t
atween man an’ his neibor.”
“There’s one commandment, my lad,” said Mr Crathie, with the dignity of
intended rebuke, “you seem to find hard to learn, and that is, to mind
your own business.”
“Gien ye mean catchin’ the herrin’, maybe ye’re richt,” said the youth.
“I ken muir aboot that nor the horse-coupin’, an’ it’s full cleaner.”
“None of your impudence!” returned the factor. “The marquis is not here
to uphold you in your follies. That they amused him is no reason why
I should put up with them. So keep your tongue between your teeth, or
you’ll find it the worse for you.”
The youth smiled a little oddly, and held his peace.
“You’re here to do what I tell you, and make no remarks,” added the
factor.
“I’m awaur o’ that, sir--within certain leemits,” returned Malcolm.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean within the leemits o’ duin’ by yer neibor as ye wad ha’e yer
neibor du by you--that’s what I mean, sir.”
“I’ve told you already that doesn’t apply in horse-dealing. Every man
has to take care of himself in the horse-market: that’s understood. If
you had been brought up amongst horses instead of herring, you would
have known that as well as any other man.”
“I doobt I’ll ha’e to gang back to the herrin’ than, sir, for they’re
like to pruv’ the honester o’ the twa. But there’s nae hypocrisy in
Kelpie, an’ she maun ha’e her day’s denner, come o’ the morn’s what
may.”
At the word _hypocrisy_, Mr Crathie’s face grew red as the sun in a
fog. He was an elder of the kirk, and had family worship every night as
regularly as his toddy. So the word was as offensive and insolent as it
was foolish and inapplicable. He would have turned Malcolm adrift on
the spot, but that he remembered--not the favour of the late marquis
for the lad--that was nothing to the factor now: his lord under the
mould was to him as if he had never been above it--but the favour
of the present marchioness, for all in the house knew that she was
interested in him. Choking down therefore his rage and indignation, he
said sternly:
“Malcolm, you have two enemies--a long tongue, and a strong conceit.
You have little enough to be proud of, my man, and the less said the
better. I advise you to mind what you’re about, and show suitable
respect to your superiors, or as sure as judgment, you’ll go back to
fish-guts.”
While he spoke, Malcolm had been smoothing Kelpie all over with his
palms; the moment the factor ceased talking, he ceased stroking, and
with one arm thrown over the mare’s back, looked him full in the face.
“Gien ye imaigine, Maister Crathie,” he said, “’at I coont it ony rise
i’ the warl’ ’at brings me un’er the orders o’ a man less honest than
he micht be, ye’re mista’en. I dinna think it’s pride this time; I wad
ile Blue Peter’s lang butes till him, but I winna lee for ony factor
atween this an’ Davy Jones.”
It was too much. Mr Crathie’s feelings overcame him, and he was a
wrathful man to see, as he strode up to the youth with clenched fist.
“Haud frae the mere, for God’s sake, Maister Crathie,” cried Malcolm.
But even as he spoke, two reversed Moorish arches of gleaming iron
opened on the terror-quickened imagination of the factor a threatened
descent from which his most potent instinct, that of self-preservation,
shrank in horror. He started back white with dismay, having by a
bare inch of space and a bare moment of time, escaped what he called
Eternity. Dazed with fear he turned and had staggered half-way across
the yard, as if going home, before he recovered himself. Then he turned
again, and with what dignity he could scrape together said--
“MacPhail, you go about your business.”
In his foolish heart he believed Malcolm had made the brute strike out.
“I canna weel gang till Stoat comes hame,” answered Malcolm.
“If I see you about the place after sunset, I’ll horsewhip you,” said
the factor, and walked away, showing the crown of his hat.
Malcolm again smiled oddly, but made no reply. He undid the mare’s
halter, and took her into the stable. There he fed her, standing by
her all the time she ate, and not once taking his eyes off her. His
father, the late marquis, had bought her at the sale of the stud of
a neighbouring laird, whose whole being had been devoted to horses,
till the pale one came to fetch himself: the men about the stable had
drugged her, and, taken with the splendid lines of the animal, nor
seeing cause to doubt her temper as she quietly obeyed the halter,
he had bid for her, and, as he thought, had her a great bargain. The
accident that finally caused his death followed immediately after,
and while he was ill no one cared to vex him by saying what she had
turned out. But Malcolm had even then taken her in hand in the hope
of taming her a little before his master, who often spoke of his
latest purchase, should see her again. In this he had very partially
succeeded; but if only for the sake of him whom he now knew for his
father, nothing would have made him part with the animal. Besides, he
had been compelled to use her with so much severity at times that he
had grown attached to her from the reaction of pity as well as from
admiration of her physical qualities, and the habitude of ministering
to her wants and comforts. The factor, who knew Malcolm only as a
servant, had afterwards allowed her to remain in his charge, merely in
the hope, through his treatment, of by-and-by selling her, as she had
been bought, for a faultless animal, but at a far better price.