THE SAME NIGHT.
When he came within sight of it, however, he perceived, by the
hurried movement of lights, that instead of being folded in silence,
the house was in unwonted commotion. As he hastened to the south
door, the prince of the power of the air himself seemed to resist
his entrance, so fiercely did the wind, eddying round the building,
dispute every step he made towards it; and when at length he reached
and opened it, a blast, rushing up the glen straight from the sea,
burst wide the opposite one, and roared through the hall like a
torrent. Lady Florimel, flitting across it at the moment, was almost
blown down, and shrieked aloud for help. Malcolm was already at the
north door, exerting all his strength to close it, when she spied
him, and, bounding to him, with white face and dilated eyes,
exclaimed--
“Oh Malcolm! what a time you have been!”
“What’s wrang, my leddy?” cried Malcolm with respondent terror.
“Don’t you hear it?” she answered. “The wind is blowing the house
down. There’s just been a terrible fall, and every moment I hear
it going. If my father were only come! We shall be all blown into
the burn.”
“Nae fear o’ that, my leddy!” returned Malcolm. “The wa’s o’ the
auld carcass are ’maist live rock, an’ ’ill stan’ the warst win’
’at ever blew--this side o’ the tropics, ony gait. Gien ’t war
ance to get its nose in, I wadna say but it micht tirr (_strip_) the
rufe, but it winna blaw ’s intill the burn, my leddy. I’ll jist gang
and see what’s the mischeef.”
He was moving away, but Lady Florimel stopped him.
“No, no, Malcolm!” she said. “It’s very silly of me, I dare say;
but I’ve been so frightened. They’re such a set of geese--Mrs Courthope,
and the butler, and all of them! Don’t leave me, please.”
“I _maun_ gang and see what’s amiss, my leddy,” answered Malcolm;
“but ye can come wi’ me gien ye like. What’s fa’en, div ye think?”
“Nobody knows. It fell with a noise like thunder, and shook the
whole house.”
“It’s far ower dark to see onything frae the ootside,” rejoined
Malcolm, “--at least afore the mune’s up. It’s as dark ’s pick. But I
can sune saitisfee mysel’ whether the deil’s i’ the hoose or no.”
He took a candle from the hall-table, and went up the square
staircase, followed by Florimel.
“What w’y is ’t, my leddy, ’at the hoose is no lockit up, an’ ilka
body i’ their beds?” he asked.
“My father is coming home to-night. Didn’t you know? But I should
have thought a storm like this enough to account for people not
being in bed!”
“It’s a fearfu’ nicht for him to be sae far frae his! Whaur’s he
comin’ frae? Ye never speyk to me noo, my leddy, an’ naebody tell’t
me.”
“He was to come from Fochabers to-night. Stoat took the bay mare to
meet him yesterday.”
“He wad never start in sic a win’! It’s fit to blaw the saiddle
aff o’ the mear’s back.”
“He may have started before it came on to blow like this,” said
Lady Florimel.
Malcolm liked the suggestion the less because of its probability,
believing, in that case, he should have arrived long ago. But he
took care not to increase Florimel’s alarm.
By this time Malcolm knew the whole of the accessible inside of the
roof well--better far than any one else about the house. From one
part to another, over the whole of it, he now led Lady Florimel.
In the big-shadowed glimmer of his one candle, all parts of the
garret seemed to him frowning with knitted brows over resentful
memories--as if the phantom forms of all the past joys and
self-renewing sorrows, all the sins and wrongs, all the disappointments
and failures of the house, had floated up, generation after
generation, into that abode of helpless brooding, and there hung
hovering above the fast fleeting life below, which now, in its turn,
was ever sending up like fumes from heart and brain, to crowd the
dim, dreary, larva-haunted, dream-wallowing chaos of half-obliterated
thought and feeling. To Florimel it looked a dread waste, a
region deserted and forgotten, mysterious with far-reaching nooks
of darkness, and now awful with the wind raving and howling over
slates and leads so close to them on all sides,--as if a flying
army of demons were tearing at the roof to get in and find covert
from pursuit.
At length they approached Malcolm’s own quarters, where they would
have to pass the very door of the wizard’s chamber to reach a short
ladder-like stair that led up into the midst of naked rafters, when,
coming upon a small storm window near the end of a long passage,
Lady Florimel stopped and peeped out.
“The moon is rising,” she said, and stood looking.
Malcolm glanced over her shoulder. Eastward a dim light shone
up from behind the crest of a low hill. Great part of the sky was
clear, but huge masses of broken cloud went sweeping across the
heavens. The wind had moderated.
“Aren’t we somewhere near your friend the wizard?” said Lady
Florimel, with a slight tremble in the tone of mockery with which
she spoke.
Malcolm answered as if he were not quite certain.
“Isn’t your own room somewhere hereabouts?” asked the girl sharply.
“We’ll jist gang till ae ither queer place,” observed Malcolm,
pretending not to have heard her, “and gien the rufe be a’ richt
there, I s’ no bather my heid mair aboot it till the mornin’. It’s
but a feow steps farther, an’ syne a bit stair.”
A fit of her not unusual obstinacy had however seized Lady Florimel.
“I won’t move a step,” she said, “until you have told me where the
wizard’s chamber is.”
“Ahint ye, my leddy, gien ye wull hae ’t,” answered Malcolm, not
unwilling to punish her a little; “--jist at the far en’ o’ the
transe there.”
In fact the window in which she stood, lighted the whole length of
the passage from which it opened.
Even as he spoke, there sounded somewhere as it were the slam of
a heavy iron door, the echoes of which seemed to go searching into
every cranny of the multitudinous garrets. Florimel gave a shriek,
and laying hold of Malcolm, clung to him in terror. A sympathetic
tremor, set in motion by her cry, went vibrating through the
fisherman’s powerful frame, and, almost involuntarily, he clasped
her close. With wide eyes they stood staring down the long passage,
of which, by the poor light they carried, they could not see a
quarter of the length. Presently they heard a soft foot-fall along
its floor, drawing slowly nearer through the darkness; and slowly
out of the darkness grew the figure of a man, huge and dim, clad
in a long flowing garment, and coming straight on to where they
stood. They clung yet closer together. The apparition came within
three yards of them, and then they recognized Lord Lossie in his
dressing-gown.
They started asunder. Florimel flew to her father, and Malcolm
stood, expecting the last stroke of his evil fortune. The marquis
looked pale, stern, and agitated. Instead of kissing his daughter
on the forehead as was his custom, he put her from him with
one expanded palm, but the next moment drew her to his side. Then
approaching Malcolm, he lighted at his the candle he carried, which
a draught had extinguished on the way.
“Go to your room, MacPhail,” he said, and turned from him, his arm
still round Lady Florimel.
They walked away together down the long passage, vaguely visible
in flickering fits. All at once their light vanished, and with
it Malcolm’s eyes seemed to have left him. But a merry laugh, the
silvery thread in which was certainly Florimel’s, reached his ears,
and brought him to himself.