THE DISCLOSURE.
When the earl saw Malcolm coming, although he was no coward, and had
reason to trust his skill, yet knowing himself both in the wrong and
vastly inferior in strength to his enemy, it may be pardoned him that
for the next few seconds his heart doubled its beats. But of all things
he must not show fear before Florimel!
“What can the fellow be after now?” he said. “I must go down to him.”
“No, no; don’t go near him--he may be violent,” objected Florimel, and
laid her hand on his arm with a beseeching look in her face. “He is a
dangerous man.”
Liftore laughed.
“Stop here till I return,” he said, and left the room.
But Florimel followed, fearful of what might happen, and enraged with
her brother.
Malcolm’s brief detention by Lizzy gave Liftore a little advantage,
for just as Malcolm approached the top of the great staircase,
Liftore gained it. Hastening to secure the command of the position,
and resolved to shun all parley, he stood ready to strike. Malcolm,
however, caught sight of him and his attitude in time, and, fearful of
breaking his word to Lizzy, pulled himself up abruptly a few steps from
the top--just as Florimel appeared.
“MacPhail,” she said, sweeping to the stair like an indignant goddess,
“I discharge you from my service. Leave the house instantly.”
Malcolm turned, flew down, and ran to the servants’ stair half the
length of the house away. As he crossed the servants’ hall he saw Rose.
She was the only one in the house except Clementina to whom he could
look for help.
“Come after me, Rose,” he said without stopping.
She followed instantly, as fast as she could run, and saw him enter the
drawing-room. Florimel and Liftore were there. The earl had Florimel’s
hand in his.
“For God’s sake, my lady!” cried Malcolm, “hear me one word before you
promise that man anything.”
His lordship started back from Florimel, and turned upon Malcolm in a
fury. But he had not now the advantage of the stair, and hesitated.
Florimel’s eyes dilated with wrath.
“I tell you for the last time, my lady,” said Malcolm, “if you marry
that man, you will marry a liar and a scoundrel.”
Liftore laughed, and his imitation of scorn was wonderfully successful,
for he felt sure of Florimel, now that she had thus taken his part.
“Shall I ring for the servants, Lady Lossie, to put the fellow out?” he
said. “The man is as mad as a March hare.”
Meantime Lady Clementina, her maid having gone to send her man to get
horses for her at once, was alone in her room, which was close to the
drawing-room: hearing Malcolm’s voice, she ran to the door, and saw
Rose in a listening attitude at that of the drawing-room.
“What are you doing there?” she said.
“Mr MacPhail told me to follow him, my lady, and I am waiting here till
he wants me.”
Clementina went into the drawing-room, and was present during all
that now follows. Lizzy also, hearing loud voices and still afraid of
mischief, had come peering up the stair, and now approached the other
door, behind Florimel and the earl.
“So!” cried Florimel, “this is the way you keep your promise to my
father!”
“It is, my lady. To associate the name of Liftore with his would be to
blot the scutcheon of Lossie. He is not fit to walk the street with
men: his touch is to you an utter degradation. My lady, in the name of
your father, I beg a word with you in private.”
“You insult me.”
“I beg of you, my lady--for your own dear sake.”
“Once more I order you to leave my house, and never set foot in it
again.”
“You hear her ladyship?” cried Liftore. “Get out.”
He approached threateningly.
“Stand back,” said Malcolm. “If it were not that I promised the poor
girl carrying your baby out there, I should soon----”
It was unwisely said: the earl came on the bolder. For all Malcolm
could do to parry, evade, or stop his blows, he had soon taken several
pretty severe ones. Then came the voice of Lizzy in an agony from the
door--
“Haud aff o’ yersel’, Ma’colm. I canna bide it. I gi’e ye back yer
word.”
“We’ll manage yet Lizzy,” answered Malcolm, and kept warily retreating
towards a window. Suddenly he dashed his elbow through a pane, and gave
a loud shrill whistle, the same instant receiving a blow over the eye
which the blood followed. Lizzy made a rush forward, but the terror
that the father would strike the child he had disowned, seized her, and
she stood trembling. Already, however, Clementina and Rose had darted
between, and, full of rage as he was, Liftore was compelled to restrain
himself.
“Oh!” he said, “if ladies want a share in the row, I must yield my
place,” and drew back.
The few men servants now came hurrying all together into the room.
“Take that rascal there, and put him under the pump,” said Liftore. “He
is mad.”
“My fellow-servants know better than touch me,” said Malcolm.
The men looked to their mistress.
“Do as my lord tells you,” she said, “--and instantly.”
“Men,” said Malcolm, “I have spared that foolish lord there for the
sake of this fisher-girl and his child, but don’t one of _you_ touch
me.”
Stoat was a brave enough man, and not a little jealous of Malcolm, but
he dared not obey his mistress.
And now came the tramp of many feet along the landing from the
stair-head, and the six fisherman entered, two and two. Florimel
started forward.
“My brave fisherman!” she cried. “Take that bad man MacPhail, and put
him out of my grounds.”
“I canna du ’t, my leddy,” answered their leader.
“Take Lord Liftore,” said Malcolm, “and hold him, while I make him
acquainted with a fact or two which he may judge of consequence to him.”
The men walked straight up to the earl. He struck right and left, but
was overpowered in a moment, and held fast.
“Stan’ still,” said Peter, “or I ha’e a han’-fu’ o’ twine i’ my pooch
’at I’ll jist cast a k-not aboot yer airms wi’ in a jiffey.”
His lordship stood still, muttering curses.
Then Malcolm stepped into the middle of the room approaching his sister.
“I tell you to leave the house,” Florimel shrieked, beside herself with
fury, yet pale as marble with a growing terror for which she could ill
have accounted.
“Florimel!” said Malcolm solemnly, calling his sister by name for the
first time.
“You insolent wretch!” she cried, panting. “What right have you, if you
_be_, as you say, my base-born brother, to call me by my name.”
“Florimel!” repeated Malcolm, and the voice was like the voice of her
father, “I have done what I could to serve you.”
“And I want no more such service!” she returned, beginning to tremble.
“But you have driven me almost to extremities,” he went on, heedless of
her interruption. “Beware of doing so quite.”
“Will nobody take pity on me?” said Florimel, and looked round
imploringly. Then, finding herself ready to burst into tears, she
gathered all her pride, and stepping up to Malcolm, looked him in the
face, and said,
“Pray, sir! is this house yours or mine?”
“Mine,” answered Malcolm. “I am the Marquis of Lossie, and while I am
your elder brother and the head of the family, you shall never with my
consent marry that base man--a man it would blast me to the soul to
call brother.”
Liftore uttered a fierce imprecation.
“If you dare give breath to another such word in my sister’s presence,
I will have you gagged,” said Malcolm. “If my sister marries him,” he
continued, turning again to Florimel, “not one shilling shall she take
with her beyond what she may happen to have in her purse at the moment.
She is in my power, and I will use it to the utmost to protect her from
that man.”
“Proof!” cried Liftore sullenly. But Florimel gazed with pale dilated
eyes in the face of the speaker. She knew his words were true. Her soul
assured her of it.
“To my sister,” answered Malcolm, “I will give all the proof she may
please to require; to Lord Liftore I will not even repeat my assertion.
To him I will give no shadow of proof. I will but cast him out of my
house. Stoat, order horses for Lady Bellair.”
“Gien ye please, sir, my Lord,” replied Stoat, “the Lossie Airms horses
is ordered a’ready for Lady Clementina.”
“Will my Lady Clementina oblige me by yielding her horses to Lady
Bellair?” said Malcolm, turning to her.
“Certainly, my lord,” answered Clementina.
“You, I trust, my lady,” said Malcolm, “will stay a little longer with
my sister.”
Lady Bellair came up.
“My lord,” she said, “is this the marquis or the fisherman’s way of
treating a lady?”
“Neither. But do not drive me to give the rein to my tongue. Let it be
enough to say that my house shall never be what your presence would
make it.”
He turned to the fishermen.
“Three of you take that lord to the town-gate, and leave him on the
other side of it. His servant shall follow as soon as the horses come.”
“I will go with you,” said Florimel, crossing to Lady Bellair.
Malcolm took her by the arm. For one moment she struggled, but finding
no one dared interfere, submitted, and was led from the room like a
naughty child.
“Keep my lord there till I return,” he said as he went.
He led her into the room which had been her mother’s boudoir, and when
he had shut the door,
“Florimel,” he said, “I have striven to serve you the best way I knew.
Your father, when he confessed me his heir, begged me to be good to
you, and I promised him. Would I have given all these months of my life
to the poor labour of a groom, allowed my people to be wronged and
oppressed, my grandfather to be a wanderer, and my best friend to sit
with his lips of wisdom sealed, but for your sake? I can hardly say it
was for my father’s sake, for I should have done the same had he never
said a word about you. Florimel, I loved my sister, and longed for her
goodness. But she has foiled all my endeavours. She has not loved or
followed the truth. She has been proud and disdainful, and careless of
right. Yourself young and pure, and naturally recoiling from evil, you
have yet cast from you the devotion of a noble, gifted, large-hearted,
and great-souled man, for the miserable preference of the smallest,
meanest, vilest of men. Nor that only! for with him you have sided
against the woman he most bitterly wrongs: and therein you wrong the
nature and the God of women. Once more, I pray you to give up this man;
to let your true self speak and send him away.”
“Sir, I go with my Lady Bellair, driven from her father’s house by one
who calls himself my brother. My lawyer shall make inquiries.”
She would have left the room, but he intercepted her.
“Florimel,” he said, “you are casting the pearl of your womanhood
before a swine. He will trample it under his feet and turn again and
rend you. He will treat you worse still than poor Lizzy, whom he
troubles no more with his presence.”
He had again taken her arm in his great grasp.
“Let me go. You are brutal. I shall scream.”
“You shall not go until you have heard all the truth.”
“What! more truth still? Your truth is anything but pleasant.”
“It is more unpleasant yet than you surmise. Florimel, you have driven
me to it. I would have prepared you a shield against the shock which
must come, but you compel me to wound you to the quick. I would have
had you receive the bitter truth from lips you loved, but you drove
those lips of honour from you, and now there are left to utter it only
the lips you hate; yet the truth you shall receive: it may help to save
you from weakness, arrogance, and falsehood.--Sister, your mother was
never Lady Lossie.”
“You lie. I know you lie. Because you wrong me, you would brand me with
dishonour, to take from me as well the sympathy of the world. But I
defy you.”
“Alas! there is no help, sister. Your mother indeed passed as Lady
Lossie, but my mother, the true Lady Lossie, was alive all the time,
and in truth, died only last year. For twenty years my mother suffered
for yours in the eye of the law. You are no better than the little
child his father denied in your presence. Give that man his dismissal,
or he will give you yours. Never doubt it. Refuse again, and I go from
this room to publish in the next the fact that you are neither Lady
Lossie nor Lady Florimel Colonsay. You have no right to any name but
your mother’s. You are Miss Gordon.”
She gave a great gasp at the word, but bravely fought the horror that
was taking possession of her. She stood with one hand on the back of a
chair, her face white, her eyes starting, her mouth a little open and
rigid--her whole appearance, except for the breath that came short and
quick, that of one who had died in sore pain.
“All that is now left you,” concluded Malcolm, “is the choice between
sending Liftore away, and being abandoned by him. That choice you must
now make.”
The poor girl tried to speak, but could not. Her fire was burning out,
her forced strength fast failing her.
“Florimel,” said Malcolm, and knelt on one knee and took her hand. It
gave a flutter as if it would fly like a bird; but the net of his love
held it, and it lay passive and cold. “Florimel, I will be your true
brother. I _am_ your brother, your very own brother, to live for you,
love you, fight for you, watch and ward you, till a true man takes you
for his wife.” Her hand quivered like a leaf. “Sister, when you and I
appear before our father, I shall hold up my face before him: will you?”
“Send him away,” she breathed rather than said, and sank on the floor.
He lifted her, laid her on a couch, and returned to the drawing-room.
“My lady Clementina,” he said, “will you oblige me by going to my
sister in the room at the top of the stair?”
“I will, my lord,” she answered, and went.
Malcolm walked up to Liftore.
“My lord,” he said, “my sister takes leave of you.”
“I must have my dismissal from her own lips.”
“You shall have it from the hands of my fishermen. Take him away.”
“You shall hear from me, my lord marquis, if such you be,” said Liftore.
“Let it be of your repentance, then, my lord,” said Malcolm. “That I
shall be glad to hear of.”
As he turned from him, he saw Caley gliding through the little group of
servants towards the door. He walked after her, laid his hand on her
shoulder, and whispered a word in her ear, she grew gray rather than
white, and stood still.
Turning again to go to Florimel, he saw the fishermen stopped with
their charge in the doorway by Mr Morrison and Mr Soutar, entering
together.
“My lord! my lord!” said the lawyer, coming hastily up to him, “there
can be surely no occasion for such--such--measures!”
Catching sight of Malcolm’s wounded forehead, however, he supplemented
the remark with a low exclamation of astonishment and dismay-- the tone
saying almost as clearly as words, “How ill and foolishly everything is
managed without a lawyer!”
Malcolm only smiled, and went up to the magistrate, whom he led into
the middle of the room, saying,
“Mr Morrison, every one here knows you: tell them who I am.”
“The Marquis of Lossie, my lord,” answered Mr Morrison; “and from my
heart I congratulate your people that at length you assume the rights
and honours of your position.”
A murmur of pleasure arose in response. Ere it ceased, Malcolm started
and sprung to the door. There stood Lenorme! He seized him by the arm,
and, without a word of explanation, hurried him to the room where his
sister was. He called Clementina, drew her from the room, half pushed
Lenorme in, and closed the door.
“Will you meet me on the sand-hill at sunset, my lady?” he said.
She smiled assent. He gave her the key of the tunnel, hinted that she
might leave the two to themselves for awhile, and returned to his
friends in the drawing-room.
Having begged them to excuse him for a little while, and desired Mrs
Courthope to serve luncheon for them, he ran to his grandfather,
dreading lest any other tongue than his own should yield him the opened
secret. He was but just in time, for already the town was in a tumult,
and the spreading ripples of the news were fast approaching Duncan’s
ears.
Malcolm found him, expectant and restless. When he disclosed himself,
he manifested little astonishment, only took him in his arms and
pressed him to his bosom, saying, “Ta Lort pe praised, my son! and
she wouldn’t pe at aal surprised.” Then he broke out in a fervent
ejaculation of Gaelic, during which he turned instinctively to his
pipes, for through them lay the final and only sure escape for the
prisoned waters of the overcharged reservoir of his feelings. While he
played, Malcolm slipped out, and hurried to Miss Horn.
One word to her was enough. The stern old woman burst into tears,
crying,
“Oh, my Grisel! my Grisel! Luik doon frae yer bonny hoose amo’ the
stars, an’ see the braw laad left ahint ye, an’ praise the lord ’at ye
ha’e sic a son o’ yer boady to come hame to ye whan a’ ’s ower.”
She sobbed and wept for a while without restraint. Then suddenly she
rose, dabbed her eyes indignantly, and cried,
“Hoot! I’m an auld fule. A body wad think I hed feelin’s efter a’!”
Malcolm laughed, and she could not help joining him.
“Ye maun come the morn an’ chise yer ain room i’ the Hoose,” he said.
“What mean ye by that, laddie?”
“At ye’ll ha’e to come an’ bide wi’ me noo.”
“’Deed an’ I s’ du naething o’ the kin’, Ma’colm! H’ard ever onybody
sic nonsense! What wad I du wi’ Jean? An’ I cudna thole men-fowk to
wait upo’ me. I wad be clean affrontit.”
“Weel, weel! we’ll see,” said Malcolm.
On his way back to the House, he knocked at Mrs Catanach’s door, and
said a few words to her which had a remarkable effect on the expression
of her plump countenance and deep-set black eyes.
When he reached home, he ran up the main staircase, knocked at the
first door, opened it, and peeped in. There sat Lenorme on the couch,
with Florimel on his knees, nestling her head against his shoulder,
like a child that had been very naughty but was fully forgiven. Her
face was blotted with her tears, and her hair was everywhere; but there
was a light of dawning goodness all about her, such as had never shone
in her atmosphere before. By what stormy-sweet process the fountain of
this light had been unsealed, no one ever knew but themselves.
She did not move when Malcolm entered--more than just to bring the
palms of her hands together, and look up in his face.
“Have you told him _all_, Florimel?” he asked.
“Yes, Malcolm,” she answered. “Tell him again yourself.”
“No, Florimel. Once is enough.”
“I told him _all_,” she said with a gasp; then gave a wild little cry,
and, with subdued exultation, added, “and he _loves_ me yet! He has
taken the girl without a name to his heart!”
“No wonder,” said Malcolm, “when she brought it with her.”
“Yes,” said Lenorme, “I but took the diamond casket that held my bliss,
and now I could dare the angel Gabriel to match happinesses with me.”
Poor Florimel, for all her worldly ways, was but a child. Bad
associates had filled her with worldly maxims and words and thoughts
and judgments. She had never loved Liftore, she had only taken
delight in his flatteries. And now had come the shock of a terrible
disclosure, whose significance she read in remembered looks and tones
and behaviours of the world. Her insolence to Malcolm when she supposed
his the nameless fate, had recoiled in lurid interpretation of her
own. She was a pariah--without root, without descent, without fathers
to whom to be gathered. She was nobody. From the courted and flattered
and high-seated and powerful, she was a nobody! Then suddenly to this
poor houseless, wind-beaten, rain-wet nobody, a house--no, a home
she had once looked into with longing, had opened, and received her
to its heart, that it might be fulfilled which was written of old,
“A man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from
the tempest.” Knowing herself a nobody, she now first began to be a
somebody. She had been dreaming pleasant but bad dreams: she woke, and
here was a lovely, unspeakably blessed and good reality, which had been
waiting for her all the time on the threshold of her sleep! She was
baptized into it with the tears of sorrow and shame. She had been a
fool, but now she knew it, and was going to be wise.
“Will you come to your brother, Florimel?” said Malcolm tenderly,
holding out his arms.
Lenorme raised her. She went softly to him, and laid herself on his
bosom.
“Forgive me, brother,” she said, and held up her face.
He kissed her forehead and lips, took her in his arms, and laid her
again on Lenorme’s knees.
“I give her to _you_,” he said, “for you are good.”
With that he left them, and sought Mr Morrison and Mr Soutar, who were
waiting him over a glass of wine after their lunch. An hour of business
followed, in which, amongst other matters, they talked about the
needful arrangements for a dinner to his people, fishers and farmers
and all.
After the gentlemen took their leave, nobody saw him for hours. Till
sunset approached he remained alone, shut up in the Wizard’s Chamber,
the room in which he was born. Part of the time he occupied in writing
to Mr Graham.
As the sun’s orbed furnace fell behind the tumbling waters, Malcolm
turned his face inland from the wet strip of shining shore on which he
had been pacing, and ascended the sandhill.
From the other side Clementina, but a moment later, ascended also. On
the top they met, in the red light of the sunset. They clasped each the
other’s hand, and stood for a moment in silence.
“Ah, my lord!” said the lady, “how shall I thank you that you kept your
secret from me! But my heart is sore to lose my fisherman.”
“My lady,” returned Malcolm, “you have not lost your fisherman; you
have only found your groom.”
And the sun went down, and the twilight came, and the night followed,
and the world of sea and land and wind and vapour was around them, and
the universe of stars and spaces over and under them, and eternity
within them, and the heart of each for a chamber to the other, and God
filling all--nay, nay--God’s heart containing, infolding, cherishing
all--saving all, from height to height of intensest being, by the bliss
of that love whose absolute devotion could utter itself only in death.