DISCIPLINE.
What with rats and mice, and cats and owls, and creaks and cracks,
there was no quiet about the place from night to morning; and what with
swallows and rooks, and cocks and kine, and horses and foals, and dogs
and pigeons and peacocks, and guinea-fowls and turkeys and geese, and
every farm creature but pigs, which, with all her zootrophy, Clementina
did not like, no quiet from morning to night. But if there was no
quiet, there was plenty of calm, and the sleep of neither brother nor
sister was disturbed.
Florimel awoke in the sweetest concert of pigeon-murmuring,
duck-diplomacy, fowl-foraging, foal-whinnering--the word wants an _r_
in it--and all the noises of rural life. The sun was shining into the
room by a window far off at the further end, bringing with him strange
sylvan shadows, not at once to be interpreted. He must have been
shining for hours, so bright and steady did he shine. She sprang out of
bed--with no lazy London resurrection of the old buried, half-sodden
corpse, sleepy and ashamed, but with the new birth of the new day,
refreshed and strong, like a Hercules-baby. A few aching remnants of
stiffness was all that was left of the old fatigue. It was a heavenly
joy to think that no Caley would come knocking at her door. She glided
down the long room to the sunny window, drew aside the rich old faded
curtain, and peeped out. Nothing but pines and pines--Scotch firs all
about and everywhere! They came within a few yards of the window. She
threw it open. The air was still, the morning sun shone hot upon them,
and the resinous odour exhaled from their bark and their needles and
their fresh buds, filled the room--sweet and clean. There was nothing,
not even a fence, between this wing of the house and the wood.
All through his deep sleep, Malcolm heard the sound of the sea
--whether of the phantom sea in his soul, or of the world-sea to whose
murmurs he had listened with such soft delight as he fell asleep,
matters little: the sea was with him in his dreams. But when he awoke
it was to no musical crushing of water-drops, no half-articulated tones
of animal speech, but to tumult and out-cry from the stables. It was
but too plain that he was wanted. Either Kelpie had waked too soon,
or he had overslept himself: she was kicking furiously. Hurriedly
induing a portion of his clothing, he rushed down and across the yard,
shouting to her as he ran, like a nurse as she runs up the stair to a
screaming child. She stopped once to give an eager whinny, and then
fell to again. Griffiths, the groom, and the few other men about the
place, were looking on appalled. He darted to the corn-bin, got a
great pottleful of oats, and shot into her stall. She buried her nose
in them like the very demon of hunger, and he left her for the few
moments of peace that would follow. He must finish his dressing as
fast as he could: already, after four days of travel, which with her
meant anything but a straight-forward jog-trot struggle with space, she
needed a good gallop! When he returned, he found her just finishing
her oats, and beginning to grow angry with her own nose for getting
so near the bottom of the manger. While yet there was no worse sign,
however, than the fidgetting of her hind quarters, and she was still
busy, he made haste to saddle her. But her unusually obstinate refusal
of the bit, and his difficulty in making her open her unwilling jaws,
gave unmistakable indication of coming conflict. Anxiously he asked the
bystanders after some open place where he might let her go--fields or
tolerably smooth heath, or sandy beach. He dared not take her through
the trees, he said, while she was in such a humour; she would dash
herself to pieces. They told him there was a road straight from the
stables to the shore, and there miles of pure sand without a pebble.
Nothing could be better. He mounted and rode away.
Florimel was yet but half-dressed, when the door of her room opened
suddenly, and Lady Clementina darted in--the lovely chaos of her night
not more than half as far reduced to order as that of Florimel’s.
Her moonlight hair, nearly as long as that of the fabled Godiva, was
flung wildly about her in heavy masses. Her eyes were wild also; she
looked like a holy Maenad. With a glide like the swoop of an avenging
angel, she pounced upon Florimel, caught her by the wrist and pulled
her towards the door. Florimel was startled, but made no resistance.
She half led, half dragged her up a stair that rose from a corner of
the hall gallery to the battlements of a little square tower, whence
a few yards of the beach, through a chain of slight openings amongst
the pines, was visible. Upon that spot of beach, a strange thing was
going on--at which afresh Clementina gazed with indignant horror, but
Florimel eagerly stared with the forward-borne eyes of a spectator of
the Roman arena. She saw Kelpie reared on end, striking out at Malcolm
with her fore-hoofs, and snapping with angry teeth--then upon those
teeth receive such a blow from his fist that she swerved, and wheeling,
flung her hind hoofs at his head. But Malcolm was too quick for her;
she spent her heels in the air, and he had her by the bit. Again she
reared, and would have struck at him, but he kept well by her side, and
with the powerful bit forced her to rear to her full height. Just as
she was falling backwards, he pushed her head from him, and bearing her
down sideways, seated himself on it the moment it touched the ground.
Then first the two women turned to each other. An arch of victory bowed
Florimel’s lip; her eyebrows were uplifted; the blood flushed her
cheek, and darkened the blue in her wide opened eyes. Lady Clementina’s
forehead was gathered in vertical wrinkles over her nose, and all
about her eyes was contracted as if squeezing from them the flame of
indignation, while her teeth and lips were firmly closed. The two made
a splendid contrast. When Clementina’s gaze fell on her visitor, the
fire in her eyes burned more angry still: her soul was stirred by the
presence of wrong and cruelty, and here, her guest, and looking her
straight in the eyes, was a young woman, one word from whom would stop
it all, actually enjoying the sight!
“Lady Lossie, I am ashamed of you!” she said, with severest reproof;
and turning from her, she ran down the stair.
Florimel turned again towards the sea. Presently she caught sight
of Clementina glimpsing though 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 the tide.
“MacPhail, are you a man?” cried Clementina, startling him so that in
another instant the floundering mare would have been on her feet. With
a right noble anger in her face, and her hair flying like a wind-torn
cloud, she rushed out of the wood upon him, where he sat quietly
tracing a proposition of Euclid on the sand with his whip.
“Ay, and a bold one,” was on Malcolm’s lips for reply, but he bethought
himself in time.
“I am sorry what I am compelled to do should annoy your ladyship,” he
said.
What with indignation and breathlessness--she had run so fast--
Clementina had exhausted herself in that one exclamation, and stood
panting and staring. The black bulk of Kelpie lay outstretched on
the yellow sand, giving now and then a sprawling kick or a wamble
like a lumpy snake, and her soul commiserated each movement as if it
had been the last throe of dissolution, while the grey fire of the
mare’s one-visible fierce eye, turned up from the shadow of Malcolm’s
superimposed bulk, seemed to her tender heart a mute appeal for woman’s
help.
As Malcolm spoke, he cautiously shifted his position, and, half-rising,
knelt with one knee where he had sat before, looking observant at Lady
Clementina. The champion of oppressed animality soon recovered speech.
“Get off the poor creature’s head instantly,” she said, with dignified
command. “I will permit no such usage of living thing on my ground.”
“I am very sorry to seem rude, my lady,” answered Malcolm, “but to obey
you would perhaps be to ruin my mistress’s property. If the mare were
to break away, she would dash herself to pieces in the wood.”
“You have goaded her to madness.”
“I’m the more bound to take care of her then,” said Malcolm. “But
indeed it is only temper--such temper, however, that I almost believe
she is at times possessed of a demon.”
“The demon is in yourself. There is nothing in her but what your
cruelty has put there. 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.”
“And what right have you to balk her of her own way? Has she no right
to a mind of her own?”
“She may of course have her mind, but she can’t have her way. She has
got a master.”
“And what right have you to be her master?”
“That my master, my Lord Lossie, gave me the charge of her.”
“I don’t mean that sort of right; that goes for nothing. What right in
the nature of things can you have to tyrannize over any creature?”
“None, my lady. But the higher nature has the right to rule the lower
in righteousness. Even you can’t have your own way always, my lady.”
“I certainly cannot now, so long as you keep in that position. Pray, is
it in virtue of _your_ being the higher nature that you keep _my_ way
from _me_?”
“No, my lady. But it is in virtue of right. If I wanted to take your
ladyship’s property, your dogs would be justified in refusing me my
way.--I do not think I exaggerate when I say that, if my mare here had
_her_ way, there would not be a living creature about your house by
this day week.”
Lady Clementina had never yet felt upon her the power of a stronger
nature than her own. She had had to yield to authority, but never to
superiority. Hence her self-will had been abnormally developed. Her
very compassion was self-willed. Now for the first time, she continuing
altogether unaware of it, the presence of such a nature began to
operate upon her. The calmness of Malcolm’s speech and the immovable
decision of his behaviour told.
“But,” she said, more calmly, “your mare has had four long journeys,
and she should have rested to-day.”
“Rest is just the one thing beyond her, my lady. There is a volcano of
life and strength in her you have no conception of. I could not have
dreamed of horse like her. She has never in her life had enough to do.
I believe that is the chief trouble with her. What we all want, my
lady, is a master--a real right master. I’ve got one myself; and--”
“You mean you want one yourself,” said Lady Clementina. “You’ve only
got a mistress, and she spoils you.”
“That is not what I meant, my lady,” returned Malcolm. “But one thing
I know, is that Kelpie would soon come to grief without me. I shall
keep her here till her half-hour is out, and then let her take another
gallop.”
Lady Clementina turned away. She was defeated. Malcolm knelt there
on one knee, with a hand on the mare’s shoulder, so calm, so
imperturbable, so ridiculously full of argument, that there was nothing
more for her to do or say. Indignation, expostulation, were powerless
upon him as mist upon a rock. He was the oddest, most incomprehensible
of grooms.
Going back to the house, she met Florimel, and turned again with her to
the scene of discipline. Ere they reached it, Florimel’s delight with
all around her had done something to restore Clementina’s composure:
the place was precious to her, for there she had passed nearly the
whole of her childhood. But to anyone with a heart open to the
expressions of Nature’s countenance, the place could not but have a
strange as well as peculiar charm.
Florimel had lost her way. I would rather it had been in the moonlight,
but slant sunlight was next best. It shone through a slender multitude
of mast-like stems, whose shadows complicated the wonder, while the
light seemed amongst them to have gathered to itself properties
appreciable by other organs besides the eyes, and to dwell bodily
with the trees. The soil was mainly of sand, the soil to delight the
long tap-roots of the fir-trees, covered above with a thick layer of
slow-forming mould, in the gradual odoriferous decay of needles and
cones and flakes of bark and knots of resinous exudation. It grew
looser and sandier, and its upper coat thinner, as she approached
the shore. The trees shrunk in size, stood farther apart, and grew
more individual, sending out knarled boughs on all sides of them, and
asserting themselves as the tall slender branchless ones in the social
restraint of the thicker wood dared not do. They thinned and thinned,
and the sea and the shore came shining through, for the ground sloped
to the beach without any intervening abruption of cliff or even bank;
they thinned and thinned until all were gone, and the bare long yellow
sands lay stretched out on both sides for miles, gleaming and sparkling
in the sun, especially at one spot where the water of a little stream
wandered about over them, as if it had at length found its home, but
was too weary to enter and lose its weariness, and must wait for the
tide to come up and take it. But when Florimel reached the strand, she
could see nothing of the group she sought: the shore took a little
bend, and a tongue of forest came in between.
She was on her way back to the house when she met Clementina, also
returning discomfited. Pleased as she was with them, her hostess soon
interrupted her ecstasies by breaking out in accusation of Malcolm, not
untempered, however, with a touch of dawning respect. At the same time
her report of his words was anything but accurate, for as no one can be
just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding.
But they had not time to discuss him now, as Clementina insisted on
Florimel’s putting an immediate stop to his cruelty.
When they reached the spot, there was the groom again seated on his
animal’s head, with a new proposition in the sand before him.
“Malcolm,” said his mistress, “let the mare get up. You must let her
off the rest of her punishment this time.”
Malcolm rose again to his knee.
“Yes, my lady,” he said. “But perhaps your ladyship wouldn’t mind
helping me to unbuckle her girths before she gets to her feet. I want
to give her a bath.--Come to this side,” he went on, as Florimel
advanced to his request, “--round here by her head. If your ladyship
would kneel upon it, that would be best. But you mustn’t move till I
tell you.”
“I will do anything you bid me--exactly as you say, Malcolm,” responded
Florimel.
“There’s the Colonsay blood! I can trust that!” cried Malcolm, with
a pardonable outbreak of pride in his family. Whether most of his
ancestors could so well have appreciated the courage of obedience, is
not very doubtful.
Clementina was shocked at the insolent familiarity of her poor little
friend’s groom, but Florimel saw none, and kneeled, as if she had been
in church, on the head of the mare, with the fierce crater of her fiery
brain blazing at her knee. Then Malcolm lifted the flap of the saddle,
undid the buckles of the girths, and drawing them a little from under
her, laid the saddle on the sand, talking all the time to Florimel,
lest a sudden word might seem a direction, and she should rise before
the right moment had come.
“Please, my lady Clementina, will you go to the edge of the wood.
I can’t tell what she may do when she gets up. And please, my lady
Florimel, will you run there too, the moment you get off her head.”
When he got her rid of the saddle, he gathered the reins together in
his bridle hand, took his whip in the other, and softly and carefully
straddled across her huge barrel without touching her.
“Now, my lady!” he said. “Run for the wood.”
Florimel rose and fled, heard a great scrambling behind her, and
turning at the first tree, which was only a few yards off, saw Kelpie
on her hind legs, and Malcolm, whom she had lifted with her, sticking
by his knees on her bare back. The moment her fore feet touched the
ground, he gave her the spur severely, and after one plunging kick,
off they went westward over the sands, away from the sun; nor did they
turn before they had dwindled to such a speck that the ladies could not
have told by their eyes whether it was moving or not. At length they
saw it swerve a little; by and by it began to grow larger; and after
another moment or two they could distinguish what it was, tearing along
towards them like a whirlwind, the lumps of wet sand flying behind like
an upward storm of clods. What a picture it was!--only neither of the
ladies was calm enough to see it picturewise: the still sea before,
type of the infinite always, and now of its repose; the still straight
solemn wood behind, like a past world that had gone to sleep--out of
which the sand seemed to come flowing down, to settle in the long
sand-lake of the beach; that flameless furnace of life tearing along
the shore, betwixt the sea and the land, between time and eternity,
guided, but only half controlled, by the strength of a higher will;
and the two angels that had issued--whether out of the forest of the
past or the sea of the future, who could tell?--and now stood, with
hand-shaded eyes, gazing upon that fierce apparition of terrene life.
As he came in front of them, Malcolm suddenly wheeled Kelpie, so
suddenly and in so sharp a curve that he made her “turne close to the
ground, like a cat, when scratchingly she wheeles about after a mouse,”
as Sir Philip Sidney says, and dashed her straight into the sea. The
two ladies gave a cry, Florimel of delight, Clementina of dismay, for
she knew the coast, and that there it shelved suddenly into deep water.
But that was only the better to Malcolm: it was the deep water he
sought, though he got it with a little pitch sooner than he expected.
He had often ridden Kelpie into the sea at Portlossie, even in the cold
autumn weather when first she came into his charge, and nothing pleased
her better or quieted her more. He was a heavy weight to swim with, but
she displaced much water. She carried her head bravely, he balanced
sideways, and they swam splendidly. To the eyes of Clementina the mare
seemed to be labouring for her life.
When Malcolm thought she had had enough of it, he turned her head to
the shore. But then came the difficulty. So steeply did the shore
shelve that Kelpie could not get a hold with her hind hoofs to scramble
up into the shallow water. The ladies saw the struggle, and Clementina,
understanding it, was running in an agony right into the water, with
the vain idea of helping them, when Malcolm threw himself off, drawing
the reins over Kelpie’s head as he fell, and swimming but the length
of them shorewards, felt the ground with his feet, and stood, Kelpie,
relieved of his weight, floated a little farther on to the shelf, got
a better hold with her fore feet, some hold with her hind ones, and
was beside him in a moment. The same moment Malcolm was on her back
again, and they were tearing off eastward at full stretch. So far did
the lessening point recede in the narrowing distance, that the two
ladies sat down on the sand, and fell a-talking about Florimel’s most
uncategorical groom, as Clementina, herself the most uncategorical of
women, to use her own scarcely justifiable epithet, called him. She
asked if such persons abounded in Scotland. Florimel could but answer
that this was the only one she had met with. Then she told her about
Richmond Park and Lord Liftore and Epictetus.
“Ah, that accounts for him!” said Clementina. “Epictetus was a Cynic, a
very cruel man: he broke his slave’s leg once, I remember.”
“Mr Lenorme told me that _he_ was the slave, and that his master broke
_his_ leg,” said Florimel.
“Ah, yes! I daresay.--That _was_ it. But it is of little consequence:
his principles were severe, and your groom has been his too ready
pupil. It is a pity he is such a savage: he might be quite an
interesting character.--Can he read?”
“I have just told you of his reading Greek over Kelpie’s head,” said
Florimel, laughing.
“Ah! but I meant English,” said Clementina, whose thoughts were a
little astray. Then laughing at herself she explained:--“I mean, can he
read aloud? I put the last of the Waverley novels in the box we shall
have to-morrow, or the next day at latest, I hope: and I was wondering
whether he could read the Scotch--as it ought to be read. I have never
heard it spoken, and I don’t know how to imagine it.”
“We can try him,” said Florimel. “It will be great fun anyhow. He is
_such_ a character! You will be _so_ amused with the remarks he will
make!”
“But can you venture to let him talk to you?”
“If you ask him to read, how will you prevent him? Unfortunately he has
thoughts, and they _will_ out.”
“Is there no danger of his being rude?”
“If speaking his mind about anything in the book be rudeness, he will
most likely be rude. Any other kind of rudeness is as impossible to
Malcolm as to any gentleman in the land.”
“How can you be so sure of him?” said Clementina, a little anxious as
to the way in which her friend regarded the young man.
“My father was--yes, I may say so--attached to him--so much so that
he--I can’t quite say what--but something like made him promise never
to leave my service. And this I know for myself, that not once, ever
since that man came to us, has he done a selfish thing or one to be
ashamed of. I could give you proof after proof of his devotion.”
Florimel’s warmth did not reassure Clementina; and her uneasiness
wrought to the prejudice of Malcolm. She was never quite so generous
towards human beings as towards animals. She could not be depended on
for justice except to people in trouble, and then she was very apt to
be unjust to those who troubled them.
“I would not have you place too much confidence in your Admirable
Crichton of menials, Florimel,” she said. “There is something about him
I cannot get at the bottom of. Depend upon it, a man who can be cruel
would betray on the least provocation.”
Florimel smiled superior--as she had good reason to do; but Clementina
did not understand the smile, and therefore did not like it. She
feared the young fellow had already gained too much influence over his
mistress.
“Florimel, my love,” she said, “listen to me. Your experience is not so
ripe as mine. That man is not what you think him. One day or other he
will, I fear, make himself worse than disagreeable. How _can_ a cruel
man be unselfish?”
“I don’t think him cruel at all. But then I haven’t such a soft heart
for animals as you. We should think it silly in Scotland. You wouldn’t
teach a dog manners at the expense of a howl. You would let him be a
nuisance rather than give him a cut with a whip. What a nice mother of
children you will make, Clementina! That’s how the children of good
people are so often a disgrace to them.”
“You are like all the rest of the Scotch I ever knew,” said Lady
Clementina: “the Scotch are always preaching! I believe it is in their
blood. You are a nation of parsons. Thank goodness! my morals go no
farther than doing as I would be done by. I want to see creatures happy
about me. For my own sake even, I would never cause pang to person--it
gives me such a pang myself.”
“That’s the way you are made, I suppose, Clementina,” returned
Florimel. “For me, my clay must be coarser. I don’t mind a little pain
myself, and I can’t break my heart for it when I see it-- except it
be very bad--such as I should care about myself.--But here comes the
tyrant.”
Malcolm was pulling up his mare some hundred yards off. Even now she
was unwilling to stop--but it was at last only from pure original
objection to whatever was wanted of her. When she did stand she stood
stock still, breathing hard.
“I have actually succeeded in taking a little out of her at last, my
lady,” said Malcolm as he dismounted. “Have you got a bit of sugar in
your pocket, my lady? She would take it quite gently now.”
Florimel had none, but Clementina had, for she always carried sugar for
her horse. Malcolm held the demoness very watchfully, but she took the
sugar from Florimel’s palm as neatly as an elephant, and let her stroke
her nose over her wide red nostrils without showing the least of her
usual inclination to punish a liberty with death. Then Malcolm rode
her home, and she was at peace till the evening --when he took her out
again.