A VISITATION.
Malcolm’s custom was, first, immediately after breakfast, to give
Kelpie her airing--and a tremendous amount of air she wanted for the
huge animal furnace of her frame, and the fiery spirit that kept it
alight; then, returning to the Seaton, to change the dress of the
groom, in which he always appeared about the house, lest by any chance
his mistress should want him, for that of the fisherman, and help
with the nets, or the boats, or in whatever was going on. As often as
he might he did what seldom a man would--went to the long shed where
the women prepared the fish for salting, took a knife, and wrought as
deftly as any of them, throwing a marvellously rapid succession of
cleaned herrings into the preserving brine. It was no wonder he was a
favourite with the women. Although, however, the place was malodorous
and the work dirty, I cannot claim so much for Malcolm as may at first
appear to belong to him, for he had been accustomed to the sight and
smell from earliest childhood. Still, as I say, it was work the men
would not do. He had such a chivalrous humanity that it was misery to
him to see man or woman at anything scorned, except he bore a hand
himself. He did it half in love, half in terror of being unjust.
He had gone to Mr Crathie in his fisher-clothes, thinking it better
the sick man should not be reminded of the cause of his illness more
forcibly than could not be helped. The nearest way led past a corner of
the house overlooked by one of the drawing-room windows, Clementina saw
him, and, judging by his garb that he would probably return presently,
went out in the hope of meeting him; and as he was going back to his
net by the sea-gate, he caught sight of her on the opposite side of the
burn, accompanied only by a book. He walked through the burn, climbed
the bank, and approached her.
It was a hot summer afternoon. The burn ran dark and brown and cool
in deep shade, but the sea beyond was glowing in light, and the
laburnum-blossoms hung like cocoons of sunbeams. No breath of air
was stirring; no bird sang; the sun was burning high in the west.
Clementina stood waiting him, like a moon that could hold her own in
the face of the sun.
“Malcolm,” she said, “I have been watching all day, but have not found
a single opportunity of speaking to your mistress as you wished. But to
tell the truth, I am not sorry, for the more I think about it, the less
I see what to say. That another does not like a person, can have little
weight with one who does, and I _know_ nothing against him. I wish you
would release me from my promise. It is such an ugly thing to speak to
one’s hostess to the disadvantage of a fellow-guest!”
“I understand,” said Malcolm. “It was not a right thing to ask of you.
I beg your pardon, my lady, and give you back your promise, if such you
count it. But indeed I do not think you promised.”
“Thank you, I would rather be free. Had it been before you left
London--. --Lady Lossie is very kind, but does not seem to put the same
confidence in me as formerly. She and Lady Bellair and that man make a
trio, and I am left outside. I almost think I ought to go. Even Caley
is more of a friend than I am. I cannot get rid of the suspicion that
something not right is going on. There seems a bad air about the place.
Those two are playing their game with the inexperience of that poor
child, your mistress.”
“I know that very well, my lady, but I hope yet they will not win,”
said Malcolm.
By this time they were near the tunnel.
“Could you let me through to the shore?” asked Clementina.
“Certainly, my lady.--I wish you could see the boats go out. From the
Boar’s Tail it is a pretty sight. They will all be starting together as
soon as the tide turns.”
Thereupon Clementina began questioning him about the night-fishing,
and Malcolm described its pleasures and dangers, and the pleasures of
its dangers, in such fashion that Clementina listened with delight. He
dwelt especially on the feeling almost of disembodiment, and existence
as pure thought, arising from the all-pervading clarity and fluidity,
the suspension, and the unceasing motion.
“I wish I could once feel like that,” exclaimed Clementina. “Could I
not go with you--for one night--just for once, Malcolm?”
“My lady, it would hardly do, I am afraid. If you knew the discomforts
that must assail one unaccustomed--I cannot tell--but I doubt if you
would go. All the doors to bliss have their defences of swamps and
thorny thickets through which alone they can be gained. You would need
to be a fisherman’s sister--or wife, I fear, my lady, to get through to
this one.”
Clementina smiled gravely, but did not reply, and Malcolm too was
silent, thinking.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I see how we can manage it. You shall have a
boat for your own use, my lady, and----”
“But I want to see just what you see, and to feel, as nearly as I may,
what you feel. I don’t want a downy, rose-leaf notion of the thing. I
want to understand what you fishermen encounter and experience.”
“We _must_ make a difference though, my lady. Look what clothes, what
boots we fishers must wear to be fit for our work! But you shall have
a true idea as far as it reaches, and one that will go a long way
towards enabling you to understand the rest. You shall go in a real
fishing-boat, with a full crew and all the nets, and you shall catch
real herrings; only you shall not be out longer than you please.--But
there is hardly time to arrange for it to-night, my lady.”
“To-morrow then?”
“Yes. I have no doubt I can manage it then.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Clementina. “It will be a great delight.”
“And now,” suggested Malcolm, “would you like to go through the
village, and see some of the cottages, and how the fishers live?”
“If they would not think me inquisitive, or intrusive,” answered
Clementina.
“There is no danger of that,” rejoined Malcolm. “If it were my Lady
Bellair, to patronize, and deal praise and blame, as if what she calls
poverty were fault and childishness, and she their spiritual as well
as social superior, they might very likely be what she would call
rude. She was here once before, and we have some notion of her about
the Seaton. I venture to say there is not a woman in it who is not her
moral superior, and many of them are her superiors in intellect and
true knowledge, if they are not so familiar with London scandal. Mr
Graham says that in the kingdom of heaven every superior is a ruler,
for there to rule is to raise, and a man’s rank is his power to uplift.”
“I would I were in the kingdom of heaven, if it be such as you and Mr
Graham take it for,” said Clementina.
“You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn’t wish it to be such as it
is.”
“Can one then be in it, and yet seem to be out of it, Malcolm?”
“So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might
well imagine it the other way with some.”
“Are you not uncharitable, Malcolm?”
“Our Lord speaks of many coming up to his door confident of admission,
whom yet he sends from him. Faith is obedience, not confidence.”
“Then I do well to fear.”
“Yes, my lady, so long as your fear makes you knock the louder.”
“But if I be in, as you say, how can I go on knocking?”
“There are a thousand more doors to knock at after you are in, my lady.
No one content to stand just inside the gate will be inside it long.
But it is one thing to be in, and another to be satisfied that we are
in. Such a satisfying as comes from our own feelings may, you see from
what our Lord says, be a false one. It is one thing to gather the
conviction for ourselves, and another to have it from God. What wise
man would have it before he gives it? He who does what his Lord tells
him, is in the kingdom, if every feeling of heart or brain told him he
was out. And his Lord will see that he knows it one day. But I do not
think, my lady, one can ever be quite sure, until the king himself has
come in to sup with him, and has let him know that he is altogether one
with him.”
During the talk of which this is the substance, they reached the
Seaton, and Malcolm took her to see his grandfather.
“Taal and faer and chentle and coot!” murmured the old man as he held
her hand for a moment in his. With a start of suspicion he dropped it,
and cried out in alarm--“She’ll not pe a Cam’ell, Malcolm?”
“Na, na, daddy--far frae that,” answered Malcolm.
“Then my laty will pe right welcome to Tuncan’s heart,” he replied, and
taking her hand again led her to a chair.
When they left, she expressed herself charmed with the piper, but when
she learned the cause of his peculiar behaviour at first, she looked
grave, and found his feeling difficult to understand.
They next visited the Partaness, with whom she was far more amused
than puzzled. But her heart was drawn to the young woman who sat in
a corner, rocking her child in its wooden cradle, and never lifting
her eyes from her needle-work: she knew her for the fisher-girl of
Malcolm’s picture.
From house to house he took her, and where they went, they were
welcomed. If the man was smoking, he put away his pipe, and the woman
left her work and sat down to talk with her. They did the honours of
their poor houses in a homely and dignified fashion. Clementina was
delighted. But Malcolm told her he had taken her only to the best
houses in the place to begin with. The village, though a fair sample of
fishing villages, was no ex-sample, he said: there were all kinds of
people in it as in every other. It was a class in the big life-school
of the world, whose special masters were the sea and the herrings.
“What would you do now, if you were lord of the place?” asked
Clementina, as they were walking back by the sea-gate; “--I mean, what
would be the first thing you would do?”
“As it would be my business to know my tenants that I might rule them,”
he answered, “I would first court the society and confidence of the
best men among them. I should be in no hurry to make changes, but
would talk openly with them, and try to be worthy of their confidence.
Of course I would see a little better to their houses, and improve
their harbour: and I would build a boat for myself that would show
them a better kind; but my main hope for them would be the same as for
myself--the knowledge of him whose is the sea and all its store, who
cares for every fish in its bosom, but for the fisher more than many
herrings. I would spend my best efforts to make them follow him whose
first servants were the fishermen of Galilee, for with all my heart I
believe that that Man holds the secret of life, and that only the man
who obeys him can ever come to know the God who is the root and crown
of our being, and whom to know is freedom and bliss.”
A pause followed.
“But do you not sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your
work?” asked Clementina.
“Not very hard, my lady. Sometimes I wake up to find that I have been
in an evil mood and forgetting him, and then life is hard until I get
near him again. But it is not my work that makes me forget him. When
I go a-fishing, I go to catch God’s fish; when I take Kelpie out, I
am teaching one of God’s wild creatures; when I read the Bible or
Shakspere, I am listening to the word of God, uttered in each after
its kind. When the wind blows on my face, what matter that the chymist
pulls it to pieces! He cannot hurt it, for his knowledge of it cannot
make my feeling of it a folly, so long as he cannot pull that to pieces
with his retorts and crucibles: it is to me the wind of him who makes
it blow, the sign of something in him, the fit emblem of his spirit,
that breathes into my spirit the breath of life. When Mr Graham talks
to me, it is a prophet come from God that teaches me, as certainly as
if his fiery chariot were waiting to carry him back when he had spoken;
for the word he utters at once humbles and uplifts my soul, telling it
that God is all in all and my God--that the Lord Christ is the truth
and the life, and the way home to the Father.”
After a little pause,
“And when you are talking to a rich, ignorant, proud lady?” said
Clementina, “--what do you feel then?”
“That I would it were my lady Clementina instead,” answered Malcolm
with a smile.
She held her peace.
When he left her, Malcolm hurried to Scaurnose and arranged with
Blue Peter for his boat and crew the next night. Returning to his
grandfather, he found a note waiting him from Mrs Courthope, to the
effect that, as Miss Caley, her ladyship’s maid, had preferred another
room, there was no reason why, if he pleased, he should not re-occupy
his own.