THE EVIL GENIUS.
When Malcolm first visited Mr Graham, the schoolmaster had already
preached two or three times in the pulpit of Hope Chapel. His
ministrations at the prayer-meetings had led to this. For every night
on which he was expected to speak, there were more people present than
on the last; and when the deacons saw this, they asked him to preach on
the Sundays. After two Sundays they came to him in a body, and besought
him to become a candidate for the vacant pulpit, assuring him of
success if he did so. He gave a decided refusal, however, nor mentioned
his reasons. His friend Marshal urged him, pledging himself for his
income to an amount which would have been riches to the dominie, but in
vain. Thereupon the silk mercer concluded that he must have money, and,
kind man as he was, grew kinder in consequence, and congratulated him
on his independence.
“I depend more on the fewness of my wants than on any earthly store for
supplying them,” said the dominie.
Marshal’s thermometer fell a little, but not his anxiety to secure
services which, he insisted, would be for the glory of God and the
everlasting good of perishing souls. The schoolmaster only smiled
queerly and held his peace.
He consented, however, to preach the next Sunday, and on the Monday,
consented to preach the next again. For several weeks the same thing
occurred. But he would never promise on a Sunday, or allow the briefest
advertisement to be given concerning him. All said he was feeling his
way.
Neither had he, up to this time, said a word to Malcolm about the
manner in which his Sundays were employed, while yet he talked much
about a school he had opened in a room occupied in the evenings by a
debating club, where he was teaching such children of small shopkeepers
and artisans as found their way to him--in part through his connection
with the chapel-folk. When Malcolm had called on a Sunday, his landlady
had been able to tell him nothing more than that Mr Graham had gone out
at such and such an hour--she presumed to church; and when he had once
or twice expressed a wish to accompany him wherever he went to worship,
Mr Graham had managed somehow to let him go without having made any
arrangement for his doing so.
On the evening after his encounter with Liftore, Malcolm visited the
schoolmaster, and told him everything about the affair. He concluded
by saying that Lizzie’s wrongs had loaded the whip far more than his
sister’s insult; but that he was very doubtful whether he had had any
right to constitute himself the avenger of either after such a fashion.
Mr Graham replied that a man ought never to be carried away by wrath,
as he had so often sought to impress upon him, and not without success:
but that, in the present case, as the rascal deserved it so well, he
did not think he need trouble himself much. At the same time he ought
to remind himself that the rightness or wrongness of any particular act
was of far less consequence than the rightness or wrongness of the will
whence sprang the act; and that, while no man could be too anxious as
to whether a contemplated action ought or ought not to be done, at the
same time no man _could_ do anything absolutely right until he was one
with him whose was the only absolute self-generated purity --that is,
until God dwelt in him and he in God.
Before he left, the schoolmaster had acquainted him with all that
portion of his London history which he had hitherto kept from him, and
told him where he was preaching.
When Caley returned to her mistress after giving Malcolm the message
that she did not require his services, and reported the condition of
his face, Florimel informed her of the chastisement he had received
from Liftore, and desired her to find out for her how he was, for she
was anxious about him. Somehow Florimel felt sorrier for him than she
could well understand, seeing he was but a groom --a great lumbering
fellow, all his life used to hard knocks, which probably never hurt
him. That her mistress should care so much about him added yet an acrid
touch to Caley’s spite; but she put on her bonnet and went to the
mews, to confer with the wife of his lordship’s groom, who, although
an honest woman, had not yet come within her dislike. She went to
make her inquiries, however, full of grave doubt as to his lordship’s
statement to her mistress; and the result of them was a conviction
that, beyond his facial bruises, of which Mrs Merton had heard no
explanation, Malcolm had had no hurt. This confirmed her suspicion
that his lordship had received what he professed to have given: from
a window she had seen him mount his horse; and her woman’s-fancy for
him; while it added to her hate of Malcolm, did not prevent her from
thinking of the advantage the discovery might bring in the prosecution
of her own schemes. But now she began to fear Malcolm a little as well
as hate him. And indeed he was rather a dangerous person to have about,
where all but himself had secrets more or less bad, and one at least
had dangerous ones--as Caley’s conscience, or what poor monkey-rudiment
in her did duty for one, in private asserted. Notwithstanding her hold
upon her mistress, she would not have felt it quite safe to let her
know all her secrets. She would not have liked to say, for instance,
how often she woke suddenly with a little feeble wail sounding in the
ears that fingers cannot stop, or to confess that it cried out against
a double injustice, that of life and that of death: she had crossed the
border of the region of horror, and went about with a worm coiled in
her heart, like a centipede in the stone of a peach.
“Merton’s wife knows nothing, my lady,” she said on her return. “I
saw the fellow in the yard going about much as usual. He will stand a
good deal of punishing, I fancy, my lady--like that brute of a horse
he makes such a fuss with. I can’t help wishing, for your ladyship’s
sake, we had never set eyes on him. He’ll do us all a mischief yet
before we get rid of him. I’ve had a hinstinc’ of it, my lady, from the
first moment I set eyes on him;”--Caley’s speech was never classic.
When she was excited it was low.--“And when I ’ave a hinstinc’ of
anythink, he’s not a dog as barks for nothink. Mark my words--and I’m
sure I beg your pardon, my lady --but that man will bring shame on the
house. He’s that arrergant an’ interferin’ as is certain sure to bring
your ladyship into public speech an’ a scandal: things will come to be
spoke, my lady, that hadn’t ought to be mentioned. Why, my lady, he
must ha’ struck his lordship, afore he’d ha’ give him two such black
eyes as them! And him that good-natured an’ condescendin’!--I’m sure I
don’t know what’s to come on it, but your ladyship might cast a thought
on the rest of us females as can’t take the liberties of born ladies
without sufferin’ for it. Think what the world will say of _us_. It’s
hard, my lady, on the likes of us.”
But Florimel was not one to be talked into doing what she did not
choose. Neither would she to her maid render her reasons for not
choosing. She had repaired her fortifications, strengthened herself
with Liftore, and was confident.
“The fact is, Caley,” she said, “I have fallen in love with Kelpie,
and never mean to part with her--at least till I can ride her --or she
kills me. So I can’t do without MacPhail. And I hope she won’t kill him
before he has persuaded her to let me mount her. The man must go with
the mare. Besides, he is such a strange fellow, if I turned him away I
should quite expect him to poison her before he left.”
The maid’s face grew darker. That her mistress had the slightest
intention of ever mounting that mare she did not find herself fool
enough to believe, but of other reasons she could spy plenty behind.
And such there truly were, though none of the sort which Caley’s
imagination, swift to evil, now supplied. The kind of confidence she
reposed in her groom, Caley had no faculty for understanding, and was
the last person to whom her mistress could impart the fact of her
father’s leaving her in charge to his young henchman. To the memory of
her father she clung, and so far faithfully that, even now when Malcolm
had begun to occasion her a feeling of awe and rebuke, she did not the
less confidently regard him as her good genius that he was in danger of
becoming an unpleasant one.