PORTLAND PLACE.
The latter part of the journey was not so pleasant: it rained. It was
not cold, however, and the ladies did not mind it much. It accorded
with Clementina’s mood; and as to Florimel, but for the thought of
meeting Caley, her fine spirits would have laughed the weather to
scorn. Malcolm was merry. His spirits always rose at the appearance
of bad weather, as indeed with every show of misfortune a response
antagonistic invariably awoke in him. On the present occasion he had
even to repress the constantly recurring impulse to break out in
song. His bosom’s lord sat lightly in his throne. Griffith was the
only miserable one of the party. He was tired, and did not relish the
thought of the work to be done before getting home. They entered London
in a wet fog, streaked with rain, and dyed with smoke. Florimel went
with Clementina for the night, and Malcolm carried a note from her to
Lady Bellair, after which, having made Kelpie comfortable, he went to
his lodgings.
When he entered the curiosity-shop, the woman received him with evident
surprise, and when he would have passed through to the stair, stopped
him with the unwelcome information that, finding he did not return, and
knowing nothing about himself or his occupation, she had, as soon as
the week for which he had paid in advance was out, let the room to an
old lady from the country.
“It is no great matter to me,” said Malcolm, thoughtful over the
woman’s want of confidence in him, for he had rather liked her, “only I
am sorry you could not trust me a little.”
“It’s all you know, young man,” she returned. “People as lives in
London must take care of theirselves--not wait for other people to do
it. They’d soon find theirselves nowheres in partic’lar. I’ve took care
on your things, an’ laid ’em all together, an’ the sooner you find
another place for ’em the better, for they do take up a deal o’ room.”
His personal property was not so bulky, however, but that in ten
minutes he had it all in his carpet-bag and a paper parcel, carrying
which he re-entered the shop.
“Would you oblige me by allowing these to lie here till I come for
them?” he said.
The woman was silent for a moment.
“I’d rather see the last on ’em,” she answered. “To tell the truth,
I don’t like the look on ’em. You acts a part, young man. I’m on the
square myself. But you’ll find plenty to take you in.--No, I can’t do
it. Take ’em with you.”
Malcolm turned from her, and with his bag in one hand and the parcel
under the other arm, stepped from the shop into the dreary night. There
he stood in the drizzle. It was a by-street into which gas had not
yet penetrated, and the oil lamps shone red and dull through the fog.
He concluded to leave the things with Merton, while he went to find a
lodging.
Merton was a decent sort of fellow--_not_ in his master’s confidence,
and Malcolm found him quite as sympathetic as the small occasion
demanded.
“It ain’t no sort o’ night,” he said, “to go lookin’ for a bed. Let’s
go an’ speak to my old woman: she’s a oner at contrivin’.”
He lived over the stable, and they had but to go up the stair. Mrs
Merton sat by the fire. A cradle with a baby was in front of it. On the
other side sat Caley, in suppressed exultation, for here came what she
had been waiting for--the first fruits of certain arrangements between
her and Mrs Catanach. She greeted Malcolm distantly, but neither
disdainfully nor spitefully.
“I trust you’ve brought me back my lady, MacPhail,” she said; then
added, thawing into something like jocularity, “I shouldn’t have looked
to you to go running away with her.”
“I left my lady at Lady Clementina Thornicroft’s an hour ago,” answered
Malcolm.
“Oh, of course! Lady Clem’s everything now.”
“I believe my lady’s not coming home till to-morrow,” said Malcolm.
“All the better for us,” returned Caley. “Her room ain’t ready for
her.--But I didn’t know you lodged with Mrs Merton, MacPhail,” she
said, with a look at the luggage he had placed on the floor.
“Lawks, miss!” cried the good woman, “wherever should we put him up, as
has but the next room?”
“You’ll have to find that out, mother,” said Merton. “Sure you’ve got
enough to shake down for him! With a truss of straw to help, you’ll
manage it somehow--eh, old lady?--I’ll be bound!” And with that he told
Malcolm’s condition.
“Well, I suppose we must manage it somehow,” answered his wife, “but
I’m afraid we can’t make him over-comfortable.”
“I don’t see but we _could_ take him in at the house,” said Caley,
reflectively. “There is a small room empty in the garret, I know. It
ain’t much more than a closet, to be sure, but if he could put up with
it for a night or two, just till he found a better, I would run across
and see what they say.”
Malcolm wondered at the change in her, but could not hesitate. The
least chance of getting settled in the house was a thing not to be
thrown away. He thanked her heartily. She rose and went, and they sat
and talked till her return. She had been delayed, she said, by the
housekeeper; “the cross old patch” had objected to taking in anyone
from the stables.
“I’m sure,” she went on, “there ain’t the ghost of a reason why you
shouldn’t have the room, except that it ain’t good enough. Nobody else
wants it, or is likely to. But it’s all right now, and if you’ll come
across in about an hour, you’ll find it ready for you. One of the
girls in the kitchen--I forget her name--offered to make it tidy for
you. Only take care--I give you warning: she’s a great admirer of Mr
MacPhail.”
Therewith she took her departure, and at the appointed time Malcolm
followed her. The door was opened to him by one of the maids whom
he knew by sight, and in her guidance he soon found himself in that
part of a house he liked best--immediately under the roof. The room
was indeed little more than a closet in the slope of the roof with
only a sky-light. But just outside the door was a storm-window, from
which, over the top of a lower range of houses, he had a glimpse
of the mews-yard. The place smelt rather badly of mice, while, as
the sky-light was immediately above his bed, and he had no fancy
for drenching that with an infusion of soot, he could not open it.
These, however, were the sole faults he had to find with the place.
Everything looked nice and clean, and his education had not tended to
fastidiousness. He took a book from his bag, and read a good while;
then went to bed, and fell fast asleep.
In the morning he woke early, as was his habit, sprang at once on
the floor, dressed, and went quietly down. The household was yet
motionless. He had begun to descend the last stair, when all at once
he turned deadly sick, and had to sit down, grasping the balusters. In
a few minutes he recovered, and made the best speed he could to the
stable, where Kelpie was now beginning to demand her breakfast.
But Malcolm had never in his life before felt sick, and it seemed awful
to him. Something that had appeared his own, a portion --hardly a
portion, rather an essential element of himself--had suddenly deserted
him, left him a prey to the inroad of something that was not of
himself, bringing with it faintness of heart, fear and dismay. He found
himself for the first time in his life trembling; and it was to him a
thing as appalling as strange. While he sat on the stair he could not
think; but as he walked to the mews he said to himself:
“Am I then the slave of something that is not myself--something to
which my fancied freedom and strength are a mockery? Was my courage,
my peace, all the time dependent on something not me, which could be
separated from me, and but a moment ago was separated from me, and
left me as helplessly dismayed as the veriest coward in creation? I
wonder what Alexander would have thought if, as he swung himself on
Bucephalus, he had been taken as I was on the stair.”
Afterwards, talking the thing over with Mr Graham, he said:
“I saw that I had no hand in my own courage. If I had any courage, it
was simply that I was born with it. If it left me, I could not help
it: I could neither prevent nor recall it; I could only wait until it
returned. Why, then, I asked myself, should I feel ashamed that, for
five minutes, as I sat on the stair, Kelpie was a terror to me, and I
felt as if I dared not go near her? I had almost reached the stable
before I saw into it a little. Then I did see that if I had had nothing
to do with my own courage, it was quite time I had something to do with
it. If a man had no hand in his own nature, character, being, what
could he be better than a divine puppet--a happy creature, possibly--a
heavenly animal, like the grand horses and lions of the book of the
Revelation--but not one of the gods that the sons of God, the partakers
of the divine nature, are? For this end came the breach in my natural
courage-- that I might repair it from the will and power God had given
me, that I might have a hand in the making of my own courage, in the
creating of myself. Therefore I must see to it.”
Nor had he to wait for his next lesson, namely, the opportunity of
doing what he had been taught in the first. For just as he reached
the stable, where he heard Kelpie clamouring with hoofs and teeth,
after her usual manner when she judged herself neglected, the sickness
returned, and with it such a fear of the animal he heard thundering and
clashing on the other side of the door, as amounted to nothing less
than horror. She was a man-eating horse!--a creature with bloody teeth,
brain-spattered hoofs, and eyes of hate! A flesh-loving devil had
possessed her and was now crying out for her groom that he might devour
him.
He gathered, with agonized effort, every power within him to an awful
council, and thus he said to himself:
“Better a thousand times my brain plastered the stable-wall than I
should hold them in the head of a dastard. How can God look at me with
any content if I quail in the face of his four-footed creature! Does
he not demand of me action according to what I _know_, not what I may
chance at any moment to _feel_? God is my strength, and I will lay hold
of that strength and use it, or I have none, and Kelpie may take me and
welcome.”
Therewith the sickness abated so far that he was able to open the
stable-door; and, having brought them once into the presence of their
terror, his will arose and lorded it over his shrinking quivering
nerves, and like slaves they obeyed him. Surely the Father of his
spirit was most in that will when most that will was Malcolm’s own!
It is when a man is most a man, that the cause of the man, the God
of his life, the very Life himself, the original life-creating Life,
is closest to him, is most within him. The individual, that his
individuality may blossom, and not soon be “massed into the common
clay,” must have the vital indwelling of the primary Individuality
which is its origin. The fire that is the hidden life of the bush will
not consume it.
Malcolm tottered to the corn-bin, staggered up to Kelpie, fell up
against her hind quarters as they dropped from a great kick, but got
into the stall beside her. She turned eagerly, darted at her food,
swallowed it greedily, and was quiet as a lamb while he dressed her.