RICHMOND PARK.
The next day at noon, mounted on Kelpie, Malcolm was in attendance
upon his mistress, who was eager after a gallop in Richmond Park. Lord
Liftore, who had intended to accompany her, had not made his appearance
yet, but Florimel did not seem the less desirous of setting out at the
time she had appointed Malcolm. The fact was she had said one o’clock
to Liftore, intending twelve, that she might get away without him.
Kelpie seemed on her good behaviour, and they started quietly enough.
By the time they had got out of the park upon the Kensington Road,
however, the evil spirit had begun to wake in her. But even when she
was quietest, she was nothing to be trusted, and about London Malcolm
found he dared never let his thoughts go, or take his attention
quite off her ears. They got to Kew Bridge in safety nevertheless,
though whether they were to get safely across was doubtful all the
time they were upon it, for again and again she seemed on the very
point of clearing the stone balustrade, but for the terrible bit and
chain without which Malcolm never dared ride her. Still, whatever her
caracoles or escapades, they caused Florimel nothing but amusement, for
her confidence in Malcolm--that he could do whatever he believed he
could--was unbounded. They got through Richmond--with some trouble, but
hardly were they well into the park, when Lord Liftore, followed by his
groom, came suddenly up behind them at such a rate as quite destroyed
the small stock of equanimity Kelpie had to go upon. She bolted.
Florimel was a good rider, and knew herself quite mistress of her
horse, and if she now followed, it was at her own will, and with a
design; she wanted to make the horses behind her bolt also if she
could. His lordship came flying after her, and his groom after him,
but she kept increasing her pace until they were all at full stretch,
thundering over the grass--upon which Malcolm had at once turned
Kelpie, giving her little rein and plenty of spur. Gradually Florimel
slackened speed, and at last pulled up suddenly. Liftore and his groom
went past her like the wind. She turned at right angles and galloped
back to the road. There, on a gaunt thoroughbred, with a furnace of old
life in him yet, sat Lenorme, whom she had already passed and signalled
to remain thereabout. They drew alongside of each other, but they did
not shake hands; they only looked each in the other’s eyes, and for a
few moments neither spoke. The three riders were now far away over the
park, and still Kelpie held on and the other horses after her.
“I little expected _such_ a pleasure,” said Lenorme.
“I meant to give it you, though,” said Florimel, with a merry laugh.
“Bravo, Kelpie! take them with you,” she cried, looking after the
still retreating horsemen. “I have got a familiar since I saw you
last, Raoul,” she went on. “See if I don’t get some good for us out of
him!--We’ll move gently along the road here, and by the time Liftore’s
horse is spent, we shall be ready for a good gallop. I want to tell you
all about it. I did not mean Liftore to be here when I sent you word,
but he has been too much for me.”
Lenorme replied with a look of gratitude; and as they walked their
horses along, she told him all concerning Malcolm and Kelpie.
“Liftore hates him already,” she said, “and I can hardly wonder; but
_you_ must not, for you will find him useful. He is one I can depend
upon. You should have seen the look Liftore gave him when he told him
he could not sit his mare! It would have been worth gold to you.”
Lenorme winced a little.
“He thinks no end of his riding,” Florimel continued; “but if it were
not so improper to have secrets with another gentleman, I would tell
you that he rides--just pretty well.”
Lenorme’s great brow gloomed over his eyes like the Eiger in a mist,
but he said nothing yet.
“He wants to ride Kelpie, and I have told my groom to let him have her.
Perhaps she’ll break his neck.”
Lenorme smiled grimly.
“You wouldn’t mind, would you, Raoul?” added Florimel, with a roguish
look.
“Would you mind telling me, Florimel, what you mean by the impropriety
of having secrets with another gentleman? Am _I_ the other gentleman?”
“Why, of course! You know Liftore imagines he has only to name the day.”
“And you allow an idiot like that to cherish such a degrading idea of
you.”
“Why, Raoul! what does it matter what a fool like him thinks?”
“If you don’t mind it, I do. I feel it an insult to me that he should
dare think of you like that.”
“I don’t know. I suppose I shall have to marry him some day.”
“Lady Lossie, do you want to make me hate you?”
“Don’t be foolish, Raoul. It won’t be to-morrow--nor the next day.
_Freuet euch des Lebens!_”
“O Florimel! what is to come of this? Do you want to break my heart?
--I hate to talk rubbish. You won’t kill me--you will only ruin my
work, and possibly drive me mad.”
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? Like the
rest of his class he seems to think himself perfectly justified in
making fools of women. _I_ want to help you to grow as beautiful as
God meant you to be when he thought of you first. I want you to be my
embodied vision of life, that I may for ever worship at your feet--live
in you, die with you: such bliss, even were there nothing beyond, would
be enough for the heart of a God to bestow.”
“Stop, stop, Raoul; I’m not worthy of such love,” said Florimel, again
laying her hand on his arm. “I do wish for your sake I had been born a
village-girl.”
“If you had been, then I might have wished for your sake that I had
been born a marquis. As it is I would rather be a painter than any
nobleman in Europe--that is, with you to love me. Your love is my
patent of nobility. But I may glorify what you love--and tell you that
I can confer something on you also--what none of your noble admirers
can.--God forgive me! you will make me hate them all!”
“Raoul, this won’t do at all,” said Florimel, with the authority that
should belong only to the one in the right. And indeed for the moment
she felt the dignity of restraining a too impetuous passion. “You will
spoil everything. I dare not come to your studio if you are going to
behave like this. It would be very wrong of me. And if I am never to
come and see you, I shall die--I know I shall.”
The girl was so full of the delight of the secret love between them,
that she cared only to live in the present as if there were no future
beyond: Lenorme wanted to make that future like but better than the
present. The word marriage put Florimel in a rage. She thought herself
superior to Lenorme, because he, in the dread of losing her, would have
her marry him at once, while she was more than content with the bliss
of seeing him now and then. Often and often her foolish talk stung him
with bitter pain--worst of all when it compelled him to doubt whether
there was that in her to be loved as he was capable of loving. Yet
always the conviction that there was a deep root of nobleness in her
nature again got uppermost; and, had it not been so, I fear he would,
nevertheless, have continued to prove her irresistible as often as she
chose to exercise upon him the full might of her witcheries. At one
moment she would reveal herself in such a sudden rush of tenderness
as seemed possible only to one ready to become his altogether and for
ever; the next she would start away as if she had never meant anything,
and talk as if not a thought were in her mind beyond the cultivation
of a pleasant acquaintance doomed to pass with the season, if not with
the final touches to her portrait. Or she would fall to singing some
song he had taught her, more likely a certain one he had written in a
passionate mood of bitter tenderness, with the hope of stinging her
love to some show of deeper life; but would, while she sang, look with
merry defiance in his face, as if she adopted in seriousness what he
had written in loving and sorrowful satire.
They rode in silence for some hundred yards. At length he spoke,
replying to her last asseveration.
“Then what _can_ you gain, child,” he said----
“Will you dare to call _me_ child--a marchioness in my own right!” she
cried, playfully threatening him with uplifted whip, in the handle of
which the little jewels sparkled.
“What, then, can you gain, my lady marchioness,” he resumed, with soft
seriousness, and a sad smile, “by marrying one of your own rank?--I
should lay new honour and consideration at your feet. I am young. I
have done fairly well already. 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.”
He spoke the words with a certain tone of dignified playfulness.
“When shall the woman sit to you again, painter?” said Florimel-- sole
reply to his rhapsody.
The painter thought a little. Then he said:
“I don’t like that tire-woman of yours. She has two evil eyes-- one for
each of us. I have again and again caught their expression when they
were upon us, and she thought none were upon her: I can see without
lifting my head when I am painting, and my art has made me quick at
catching expressions, and, I hope, at interpreting them.”
“I don’t altogether like her myself,” said Florimel. “Of late I am not
so sure of her as I used to be. But what can I do? I must have somebody
with me, you know.--A thought strikes me. Yes. I won’t say now what it
is lest I should disappoint my--painter; but-- yes--you shall see what
I will dare for you, faithless man!”
She set off at a canter, turned on to the grass, and rode to meet
Liftore, whom she saw in the distance returning, followed by the two
grooms.
“Come on, Raoul,” she cried, looking back; “I must account for you. He
sees I have not been alone.”
Lenorme joined her, and they rode along side by side.
The earl and the painter knew each other: as they drew near, the
painter lifted his hat, and the earl nodded.
“You owe Mr Lenorme some acknowledgment, my lord, for taking charge of
me after your sudden desertion,” said Florimel. “Why did you gallop off
in such a mad fashion?”
“I am sorry,” began Liftore a little embarrassed.
“Oh! don’t trouble yourself to apologise,” said Florimel. “I have
always understood that great horsemen find a horse more interesting
than a lady. It is a mark of their breed, I am told.”
She knew that Liftore would not be ready to confess he could not hold
his hack.
“If it hadn’t been for Mr Lenorme,” she added, “I should have been left
without a squire, subject to any whim of my four-footed servant here.”
As she spoke she patted the neck of her horse. The earl, on his side,
had been looking the painter’s horse up and down with a would-be
humorous expression of criticism.
“I beg your pardon, marchioness,” he replied; “but you pulled up so
quickly that we shot past you. I thought you were close behind, and
preferred following.--Seen his best days, eh, Lenorme?” he concluded,
willing to change the subject.
“I fancy he doesn’t think so,” returned the painter. “I bought him out
of a butterman’s cart, three months ago. He’s been coming to himself
ever since. Look at his eye, my lord.”
“Are you knowing in horses, then?”
“I can’t say I am, beyond knowing how to treat them something like
human beings.”
“That’s no ill,” said Malcolm to himself. He was just near enough, on
the pawing and foaming Kelpie, to catch what was passing.-- “The fallow
’ll du. He’s worth a score o’ sic yerls as yon.”
“Ha! ha!” said his lordship; “I don’t know about that.--He’s not
the best of tempers, I can see. But look at that demon of Lady
Lossie’s--that black mare there! I wish you could teach her some of
your humanity.
“--By the way, Florimel, I think now we _are_ upon the grass,”-- he
said it loftily, as if submitting to an injustice--“I will presume to
mount the reprobate.”
The gallop had communicated itself to Liftore’s blood, and, besides,
he thought after such a run Kelpie would be less extravagant in her
behaviour.
“She is at your service,” said Florimel.
He dismounted, his groom rode up, he threw him the reins, and called
Malcolm.
“Bring your mare here, my man,” he said.
Malcolm rode her up half way, and dismounted.
“If your lordship is going to ride her,” he said, “will you please get
on her here. I would rather not take her near the other horses.”
“Well, you know her better than I do.--You and I must ride about the
same length, I think.”
So saying his lordship carelessly measured the stirrup-leather against
his arm, and took the reins.
“Stand well forward, my lord. Don’t mind turning your back to her head:
I’ll look after her teeth; you mind her hind-hoof,” said Malcolm, with
her head in one hand and the stirrup in the other.
Kelpie stood rigid as a rock, and the earl swung himself up cleverly
enough. But hardly was he in the saddle, and Malcolm had just let her
go, when she plunged and lashed out; then, having failed to unseat her
rider, stood straight up on her hind legs.
“Give her her head, my lord,” cried Malcolm.
She stood swaying in the air, Liftore’s now frightened face half hid in
her mane, and his spurs stuck in her flanks.
“Come off her, my lord, for God’s sake. Off with you!” cried Malcolm,
as he leaped at her head. “She’ll be on her back in a moment.”
Liftore only clung the harder. Malcolm caught her head--just in time:
she was already falling backwards.
“Let all go, my lord. Throw yourself off.”
He swung her towards him with all his strength, and just as his
lordship fell off behind her, she fell sideways to Malcolm, and clear
of Liftore.
Malcolm was on the side away from the little group, and their own
horses were excited, so those who had looked breathless on at the
struggle could not tell how he had managed it, but when they expected
to see the groom writhing under the weight of the demoness, there he
was with his knee upon her head--while Liftore was gathering himself up
from the ground, only just beyond the reach of her iron-shod hoofs.
“Thank God!” said Florimel, “there is no harm done.--Well, have you had
enough of her yet, Liftore?”
“Pretty nearly, I think,” said his lordship, with an attempt at a
laugh, as he walked rather feebly and foolishly towards his horse. He
mounted with some difficulty, and looked very pale.
“I hope you’re not much hurt,” said Florimel kindly, as she moved
alongside of him.
“Not in the least--only disgraced,” he answered, almost angrily. “The
brute’s a perfect Satan. You _must_ part with her. With such a horse
and such a groom you’ll get yourself talked of all over London. I
believe the fellow himself was at the bottom of it. You really _must_
sell her.”
“I would, my lord, if _you_ were my groom,” answered Florimel, whom his
accusation of Malcolm had filled with angry contempt; and she moved
away towards the still prostrate mare.
Malcolm was quietly seated on her head. She had ceased sprawling, and
lay nearly motionless, but for the heaving of her sides with her huge
inhalations. She knew from experience that struggling was useless.
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” said Malcolm, “but I daren’t get up.”
“How long do you mean to sit there then?” she asked.
“If your ladyship wouldn’t mind riding home without me, I would give
her a good half hour of it. I always do when she throws herself over
like that.--I’ve gat my Epictetus?” he asked himself, feeling in his
coat pocket.
“Do as you please,” answered his mistress. “Let me see you when you get
home. I should like to know you are safe.”
“Thank you, my lady; there’s little fear of that,” said Malcolm.
Florimel returned to the gentlemen, and they rode homewards. On the way
she said suddenly to the earl,
“Can you tell me, Liftore, who Epictetus was?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered his lordship. “One of the old
fellows.”
She turned to Lenorme. Happily the Christian heathen was not altogether
unknown to the painter.
“May I inquire why your ladyship asks?” he said, when he had told all
he could at the moment recollect.
“Because,” she answered, “I left my groom sitting on his horse’s head
reading Epictetus.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Liftore. “Ha! ha! ha! In the original, I suppose!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Florimel.
In about two hours Malcolm reported himself. Lord Liftore had gone
home, they told him. The painter-fellow, as Wallis called him, had
stayed to lunch, but was now gone also, and Lady Lossie was alone in
the drawing-room.
She sent for him.
“I am glad to see you safe, MacPhail,” she said. “It is clear your
Kelpie--don’t be alarmed; I am not going to make you part with her--but
it is clear she won’t always do for you to attend me upon. Suppose now
I wanted to dismount and make a call, or go into a shop?”
“There’s a sort of a friendship between your Abbot and her, my lady;
she would stand all the better if I had him to hold.”
“Well, but how would you put me up again?”
“I never thought of that, my lady. Of course I daren’t let you come
near Kelpie.”
“Could you trust yourself to buy another horse to ride after me about
town?”
“No, my lady, not without a ten days’ trial. If lies stuck like London
mud, there’s many a horse would never be seen again. But there’s Mr
Lenorme! If he would go with me, I fancy between us we could do pretty
well.”
“Ah! a good idea,” returned his mistress. “But what makes you think of
him?” she added, willing enough to talk about him.
“The look of the gentleman and his horse together, and what I heard him
say,” answered Malcolm.
“What did you hear him say?”
“That he knew he had to treat horses something like human beings. I’ve
often fancied, within the last few months, that God does with some
people something like as I do with Kelpie.”
“I know nothing about theology.”
“I don’t fancy you do, my lady; but this concerns biography rather than
theology. No one could tell what I meant except he had watched his own
history, and that of people he knew.”
“And horses too?”
“It’s hard to get at their insides, my lady, but I suspect it must be
so. I’ll ask Mr Graham.”
“What Mr Graham?”
“The schoolmaster of Portlossie.”
“Is he in London, then?”
“Yes, my lady. He believed too much to please the presbytery, and they
turned him out.”
“I should like to see him. He was very attentive to my father on his
death-bed.”
“Your ladyship will never know till you are dead yourself what Mr
Graham did for my lord.”
“What do you mean? What could he do for him?”
“He helped him through sore trouble of mind, my lady.”
Florimel was silent for a little, then repeated, “I should like to see
him. I ought to pay him some attention. Couldn’t I make them give him
his school again?”
“I don’t know about that, my lady; but I am sure he would not take it
against the will of the presbytery.”
“I should like to do something for him. Ask him to call.”
“If your ladyship lays your commands upon me,” answered Malcolm;
“otherwise I would rather not.”
“Why so, pray?”
“Because, except he can be of any use to you, he will not come.”
“But I want to be of use to him.”
“How, if I may ask, my lady?”
“That I can’t exactly say on the spur of the moment. I must know the
man first--especially if you are right in supposing he would not enjoy
a victory over the presbytery. _I_ should. He wouldn’t take money, I
fear.”
“Except it came of love or work, he would put it from him as he would
brush the dust from his coat.”
“I could introduce him to good society. That is no small privilege to
one of his station.”
“He has more of that and better than your ladyship could give him. He
holds company with Socrates and St. Paul, and greater still.”
“But they’re not like living people.”
“Very like them, my lady--only far better company in general. But Mr
Graham would leave Plato himself--yes, or St. Paul either, though
he were sitting beside him in the flesh, to go and help any old
washerwoman that wanted him.”
“Then I want him.”
“No, my lady, you don’t want him.”
“How dare you say so?”
“If you did, you would go to him.”
Florimel’s eyes flashed, and her pretty lip curled. She turned to her
writing-table, annoyed with herself that she could not find a fitting
word wherewith to rebuke his presumption--rudeness, was it not?--and
a feeling of angry shame arose in her, that she, the Marchioness of
Lossie, had not dignity enough to prevent her own groom from treating
her like a child. But he was far too valuable to quarrel with.
She sat down and wrote a note.
“There,” she said, “take that note to Mr Lenorme. I have asked him to
help you in the choice of a horse.”
“What price would you be willing to go to, my lady?”
“I leave that to Mr Lenorme’s judgment--and your own,” she added.
“Thank you, my lady,” said Malcolm, and was leaving the room, when
Florimel called him back.
“Next time you see Mr Graham,” she said, “give him my compliments, and
ask him if I can be of any service to him.”
“I’ll do that, my lady. I am sure he will take it very kindly.”
Florimel made no answer, and Malcolm went to find the painter.