SEA.
The evening came, and the company at Lossie House was still seated at
table, Clementina heartily weary of the vapid talk that had been going on
all through the dinner, when she was informed that a fisherman of the name
of Mair was at the door, accompanied by his wife, saying they had an
appointment with her. She had already acquainted her hostess, when first
they sat down, with her arrangements for going a-fishing that night, and
much foolish talk and would-be wit had followed: now, when she rose and
excused herself, they all wished her a pleasant evening, in a tone
indicating the conviction that she little knew what she was about, and
would soon be longing heartily enough to be back with them in the
drawing-room, whose lighted windows she would see from the boat. But
Clementina hoped otherwise, hurriedly changed her dress, hastened to join
Malcolm's messengers, and almost in a moment had made the two child-like
people at home with her by the simplicity and truth of her manner and the
directness of her utterance. They had not talked with her five minutes
before they said in their hearts that here was the wife for the marquis if
he could get her.
"She's jist like ane o' oorsel's," whispered Annie to her husband on the
first opportunity, "only a hantle better an' bonnier."
They took the nearest way to the harbor--through the town--and Lady
Clementina and Blue Peter kept up a constant talk as they went. All in
the streets and at the windows stared to see the grand lady from the House
walking between a Scaurnose fisherman and his wife, and chatting away with
them as if they were all fishers together.
"What's the wordle comin' till?" cried Mrs. Mellis, the draper's wife, as
she saw them pass.
"I'm glaid to see the yoong wuman--an' a bonny lass she is--in sic guid
company," said Miss Horn, looking down from the opposite side of the way.
"I'm thinkin' the han' o' the markis 'ill be i' this, no'!"
All was ready to receive her, but in the present bad state of the harbor,
and the tide having now ebbed a little way, the boat could not get close
either to quay or shore. Six of the crew were on board, seated on the
thwarts with their oars shipped, for Peter had insisted on a certain
approximation to man-of-war manners and discipline for the evening, or at
least until they got to the fishing-ground. The shore itself formed one
side of the harbor, and sloped down into it, and on the sand stood Malcolm
with a young woman, whom Clementina recognized at once as the girl she had
seen at the Findlays'.
"My lady," he said, approaching, "would you do me the favor to let Lizzy
go with you? She would like to attend your ladyship, because, being a
fisherman's daughter, she is used to the sea, and Mrs. Mair is not so much
at home upon it, being a farmer's daughter from inland."
Receiving Clementina's thankful assent, he turned to Lizzy and said, "Min'
ye tell my lady what rizzon ye ken whaurfor my mistress at the Hoose sudna
be merried upo' Lord Liftore--him 'at was Lord Meikleham. Ye may speyk to
my lady there as ye wad to mysel; an' better, haein' the hert o' a wuman."
Lizzy blushed a deep red, and dared but the glimmer of a glance at
Clementina, but there was only shame, no annoyance, in her face.
"Ye winna repent it, Lizzy," concluded Malcolm, and turned away.
He cherished a faint hope that if she heard or guessed Lizzy's story,
Clementina might yet find some way of bringing her influence to bear on
his sister even at the last hour of her chance; from which, for her sake,
he shrunk the more the nearer it drew. Clementina held out her hand to
Lizzy, and again accepted her offered service with kindly thanks.
Now, Blue Peter, having been ship's carpenter in his day, had constructed
a little poop in the stern of his craft: thereon Malcolm had laid cushions
and pillows and furs and blankets from the Psyche--a grafting of
Cleopatra's galley upon the rude fishing-boat--and there Clementina was to
repose in state. Malcolm gave a sign: Peter took his wife in his arms,
and, walking through the few yards of water between, lifted her into the
boat, which lay with its stern to the shore. Malcolm and Clementina turned
to each other: he was about to ask leave to do her the same service, but
she spoke before him. "Put Lizzy on board first," she said.
He obeyed, and when, returning, he again approached her, "Are you able,
Malcolm?" she asked. "I am very heavy."
He smiled for all reply, took her in his arms like a child, and had placed
her on the cushions before she had time to realize the mode of her
transference. Then taking a stride deeper into the water, he scrambled on
board. The same instant the men gave way. They pulled carefully through
the narrow jaws of the little harbor, and away, with quivering oar and
falling tide, went the boat, gliding out into the measureless North, where
the horizon was now dotted with the sails that had preceded it.
No sooner were they afloat than a kind of enchantment enwrapped and
possessed the soul of Clementina. Everything seemed all at once changed
utterly. The very ends of the harbor-piers might have stood in the _Divina
Commedia_ instead of the Moray Frith. Oh that wonderful look everything
wears when beheld from the other side! Wonderful surely will this world
appear--strangely _more_--when, become children again by being gathered to
our fathers, joyous day! we turn and gaze back upon it from the other
side! I imagine that to him who has overcome it the world, in very virtue
of his victory, will show itself the lovely and pure thing it was created,
for he will see through the cloudy envelope of his battle to the living
kernel below. The cliffs, the rocks, the sands, the dune, the town, the
very clouds that hung over the hill above Lossie House, were in strange
fashion transfigured. To think of people sitting behind those windows
while the splendor and freedom of space with all its divine shows invited
them, lay bare and empty to them! Out and still out they rowed and drifted
till the coast began to open up beyond the headlands on either side. There
a light breeze was waiting them. Up then went three short masts, and three
dark-brown sails shone red in the sun, and Malcolm came aft, over the
great heap of brown nets, crept with apology across the poop, and got down
into a little well behind, there to sit and steer the boat; for now,
obedient to the wind in its sails, it went frolicking over the sea.
The Bonnie Annie bore a picked crew, for Peter's boat was to him a sort of
church, in which he would not, with his will, carry any Jonah fleeing from
the will of the Lord of the sea. And that boat's crew did not look the
less merrily out of their blue eyes, or carry themselves less manfully in
danger, that they believed a Lord of the earth and the sea and the
fountains of water cared for His children, and would have them honest and
fearless.
And now came a scattering of rubies and topazes over the slow waves as the
sun reached the edge of the horizon and shone with a glory of blinding red
along the heaving level of green, dashed with the foam of their flight.
Could such a descent as this be intended for a type of death? Clementina
asked. Was it not rather as if, from a corner of the tomb behind, she saw
the back parts of a resurrection and ascension--warmth, outshining,
splendor; departure from the door of the tomb; exultant memory; tarnishing
gold, red fading to russet; fainting of spirit, loneliness; deepening blue
and green; pallor, grayness, coldness; out-creeping stars;
further-reaching memory; the dawn of infinite hope and foresight; the
assurance that under passion itself lay a better and holier mystery? Here
was God's naughty child, the world, laid asleep and dreaming--if not
merrily, yet contentedly--and there was the sky, with all the day gathered
and hidden up in its blue, ready to break forth again in laughter on the
morrow, bending over its skyey cradle like a mother; and there was the
aurora, the secret of life, creeping away round to the north to be ready.
Then first, when the slow twilight had fairly settled into night, did
Clementina begin to know the deepest marvel of this facet of the
rose-diamond life! God's night and sky and sea were hers now, as they had
been Malcolm's from childhood. And when the nets had been paid out, and
sunk straight into the deep, stretched betwixt leads below and floats and
buoys above, extending a screen of meshes against the rush of the watery
herd; when the sails were down, and the whole vault of stars laid bare to
her eyes as she lay; when the boat was still, fast to the nets, anchored
as it were by hanging acres of curtain, and all was silent as a church,
waiting, and she might dream or sleep or pray as she would, with nothing
about her but peace and love and the deep sea, and over her but still
peace and love and the deeper sky, then the soul of Clementina rose and
worshipped the soul of the universe; her spirit clave to the Life of her
life, the Thought of her thought, the Heart of her heart; her will bowed
itself to the Creator of will, worshipping the supreme, original, only
Freedom--the Father of her love, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of
the hearts of the universe, the Thinker of all thoughts, the Beginner of
all beginnings, the All-in-all. It was her first experience of speechless
adoration.
Most of the men were asleep in the bows of the boat: all were lying down
but one. That one was Malcolm. He had come aft and seated himself under
the platform, leaning against it. The boat rose and sank a little, just
enough to rock the sleeping children a little deeper into their sleep:
Malcolm thought all slept. He did not see how Clementina's eyes shone
back to the heavens, no star in them to be named beside those eyes. She
knew that Malcolm was near her, but she would not speak, she would not
break the peace of the presence. A minute or two passed. Then softly woke
a murmur of sound that strengthened and grew, and swelled at last into a
song. She feared to stir lest she should interrupt its flow. And thus it
flowed:
The stars are steady abune;
I' the water they flichter an' flee;
But steady aye luikin' doon,
They ken themsel's i' the sea.
A' licht, an' clear, an' free,
God, Thou shinest abune:
Yet luik an' see Thysel' in me,
God, whan Thou luikest doon.
A silence followed, but a silence that seemed about to be broken. And
again Malcolm sang:
There was an auld fisher--he sat by the wa',
An' luikit oot ower the sea:
The bairnies war playin'; he smilit on them a',
But the tear stude in his e'e.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'!
An' its oh to win awa'
Whaur the bairns come hame, an' the wives they bide,
An' God is the Father o' a'!
Jocky an' Jeamy an' Tammy oot there,
A' i' the boatie gaed doon;
An' I'm ower auld to fish ony mair,
An' I hinna the chance to droon.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'! etc.
An' Jeanie she grat to ease her hert,
An' she easit hersel' awa';
But I'm ower auld for the tears to stert,
An' sae the sighs maun blaw.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'! etc.
Lord, steer me hame whaur my Lord has steerit,
For I'm tired o' life's rockin' sea;
An' dinna be lang, for I'm nearhan' fearit
'At I'm 'maist ower auld to dee.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'! etc.
Again the stars and the sky were all, and there was no sound but the
slight murmurous lipping of the slow swell against the edges of the
planks. Then Clementina said, "Did you make that song, Malcolm?"
"Whilk o' them, my leddy? But it's a' ane: they're baith mine, sic as they
are."
"Thank you," she returned.
"What for, my leddy?"
"For speaking Scotch to me."
"I beg your pardon, my lady. I forgot your ladyship was English."
"Please forget it," she said. "But I thank you for your songs too. It was
the second I wanted to know about: the first I was certain was your own. I
did not know you could enter like that into the feelings of an old man."
"Why not, my lady? I never can see living thing without asking it how it
feels. Often and often, out here at such a time as this, have I tried to
fancy myself a herring caught by the gills in the net down below, instead
of the fisherman in the boat above going to haul him out."
"And did you succeed?"
"Well, I fancy I came to understand as much of him as he does himself.
It's a merry enough life down there. The flukes--plaice, you call them, my
lady--bother me, I confess. I never contemplate one without feeling as if
I had been sat upon when I was a baby. But for an old man! Why, that's
what I shall be myself one day, most likely, and it would be a shame not
to know pretty nearly how _he_ felt--near enough, at least, to make a song
about him."
"And sha'n't you mind being an old man, then, Malcolm?"
"Not in the least, my lady. I shall mind nothing so long as I can trust in
the Maker of me. If my faith in Him should give way, why then there would
be nothing worth minding either. I don't know but I should kill myself."
"Malcolm!"
"Which is worse, my lady--to distrust God, or to think life worth having
without Him?"
"But one may hope in the midst of doubt--at least that is what Mr.
Graham--and you--have taught me to do."
"Yes, surely, my lady. I won't let any one beat me at that, if I can help
it. And I think that so long as I kept my reason I should be able to cry
out, as that grandest and most human of all the prophets did, 'Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' But would you not like to sleep, my
lady?"
"No, Malcolm. I would much rather hear you talk. Could you not tell me a
story now? Lady Lossie mentioned one you once told her about an old
castle somewhere not far from here."
"Eh, my leddy," broke in Annie Mair, who had waked up while they were
speaking. "I wuss ye wud gar him tell ye that story, for my man he's h'ard
'im tell 't, an' he says it's unco gruesome: I wad fain hear 't.--Wauk up,
Lizzy," she went on, in her eagerness waiting for no answer: "Ma'colm's
gauin' to tell 's the tale o' the auld castel o' Colonsay.--It's oot by
yon'er, my leddy--no that far frae the Deid Heid.--Wauk up, Lizzy."
"I'm no sleepin', Annie," said Lizzy, "though, like Ma'colm's auld man,"
she added with a sigh, "I wad whiles fain be."
Now, there were reasons why Malcolm should not be unwilling to tell the
strange wild story requested of him, and he commenced it at once, but
modified the Scotch of it considerably for the sake of the unaccustomed
ears. When it was ended Clementina said nothing, Annie Mair said "Hech,
sirs!" and Lizzy, with a great sigh, remarked, "The deil maun be in a'
thing whaur God hasna a han', I'm thinkin'."
"Ye may tak yer aith upo' that," rejoined Malcolm.
It was a custom in Peter's boat never to draw the nets without a prayer,
uttered now by one, now by another of the crew. Upon this occasion,
whether it was in deference to Malcolm, who, as he well understood, did
not like long prayers, or that the presence of Clementina exercised some
restraint upon his spirit, out of the bows of the boat came now the solemn
voice of its master, bearing only this one sentence: "O Thoo, wha didst
tell thy dissiples to cast the net upo' the side whaur swam the fish, gien
it be Thy wull 'at we catch the nicht, lat 's catch: gien it binna Thy
wull, lat's no catch.--Haul awa', my laads."
Up sprang the men and went each to his place, and straight a torrent of
gleaming fish was pouring in over the gunwale of the boat. Such a take it
was ere the last of the nets was drawn as the oldest of them had seldom
seen. Thousands of fish there were that had never got into the meshes at
all.
"I cannot understand it," said Clementina. "There are multitudes more fish
than there are meshes in the nets to catch them: if they are not caught,
why do they not swim away?"
"Because they are drowned, my lady," answered Malcolm.
"What do you mean by that? How can you drown a fish?"
"You may call it _suffocated_ you like, my lady: it is all the same. You
have read of panic-stricken people, when a church or a theatre is on fire,
rushing to the door all in a heap and crowding each other to death? It is
something like that with the fish. They are swimming along in a great
shoal, yards thick; and when the first can get no farther, that does not
at once stop the rest, any more than it would in a crowd of people: those
that are behind come pressing up into every corner where there is room
till they are one dense mass. Then they push and push to get forward, and
can't get through, and the rest come still crowding on behind and above
and below, till a multitude of them are jammed so tight against each other
that they can't open their gills; and even if they could, there would not
be air enough for them. You've seen the goldfish in the swan-basin, my
lady, how they open and shut their gills constantly: that's their way of
getting air out of the water by some wonderful contrivance nobody
understands, for they need breath just as much as we do; and to close
their gills is to them the same as closing a man's mouth and nose. That's
how the most of those herrings are taken."
All were now ready to seek the harbor. A light westerly wind was still
blowing, with the aid of which, heavy-laden, they crept slowly to the
land. As she lay snug and warm, with the cool breath of the sea on her
face, a half sleep came over Clementina, and she half dreamed that she was
voyaging in a ship of the air, through infinite regions of space, with a
destination too glorious to be known. The herring-boat was a living
splendor of strength and speed, its sails were as the wings of a will in
place of the instruments of a force, and softly as mightily it bore them
through the charmed realms of Dreamland toward the ideal of the soul. And
yet the herring-boat but crawled over the still waters with its load of
fish, as the harvest-wagon creeps over the field with its piled-up
sheaves; and she who imagined its wondrous speed was the only one who did
not desire it should move faster. No word passed between her and Malcolm
all their homeward way. Each was brooding over the night and its joy that
enclosed them together, and hoping for that which was yet to be shaken
from the lap of the coming time.
Also, Clementina had in her mind a scheme for attempting what Malcolm had
requested of her: the next day must see it carried into effect, and ever
and anon, like a cold blast of doubt invading the bliss of confidence,
into the heart of that sea-borne peace darted the thought that if she
failed she must leave at once for England, for she would not again meet
Liftore.