The Marquis of Lossie

"How dare you refer to that again? Even you ought to know there are things a lady cannot hear. It is enough you affronted me with that before Lady Clementina – and after foolish boasts on my part of your good breeding! Now you bring it up again, when I cannot escape your low talk!"

"My lady, I am sorrier than you think; but which is worse – that you should hear such a thing spoken of, or make a friend of the man who did it – and that is Lord Liftore?"

Florimel turned away, and gave her seeming attention to the moonlit waters, sweeping past the swift sailing cutter.

Malcolm's heart ached for her: he thought she was deeply troubled. But she was not half so shocked as he imagined. Infinitely worse would have been the shock to him could he have seen how little the charge against Liftore had touched her. Alas! evil communications had already in no small degree corrupted her good manners. Lady Bellair had uttered no bad words in her hearing: had softened to decency every story that required it; had not unfrequently tacked a worldly wise moral to the end of one; and yet, and yet, such had been the tone of her telling, such the allotment of laughter and lamentation, such the acceptance of things as necessary, and such the repudiation of things as Quixotic, puritanical, impossible, that the girl's natural notions of the lovely and the clean had got dismally shaken and confused.

Happily it was as yet more her judgment than her heart that was perverted. But had she spoken out what was in her thoughts as she looked over the great wallowing water, she would have merely said that for all that Liftore was no worse than other men. They were all the same. It was very unpleasant; but how could a lady help it? If men would behave so, were by nature like that, women must not make themselves miserable about it. They need ask no questions. They were not supposed to be acquainted with the least fragment of the facts, and they must cleave to their ignorance, and lay what blame there might be on the women concerned. The thing was too indecent even to think about.

Ostrich-like they must hide their heads – close their eyes and take the vice in their arms – to love, honour, and obey, as if it were virtue's self, and men as pure as their demands on their wives.

There are thousands that virtually reason thus: Only ignore the thing effectually, and for you it is not. Lie right thoroughly to yourself, and the thing is gone. The lie destroys the fact. So reasoned Lady Macbeth – until conscience at last awoke, and she could no longer keep even the smell of the blood from her. What need Lady Lossie care about the fisher girl, or any other concerned with his past, so long as he behaved like a gentleman to her! Malcolm was a foolish meddling fellow, whose interference was the more troublesome that it was honest.

She stood thus gazing on the waters that heaved and swept astern, but without knowing that she saw them, her mind full of such nebulous matter as, condensed, would have made such thoughts as I have set down. And still and ever the water rolled and tossed away behind in the moonlight.

"Oh, my lady!" said Malcolm, "what it would be to have a soul as big and as clean as all this!"

She made no reply, did not turn her head, or acknowledge that she heard him, a few minutes more she stood, then went below in silence, and Malcolm saw no more of her that night.

CHAPTER LII: HOPE CHAPEL

It was Sunday, during which Malcolm lay at the point of death some three stories above his sister's room. There, in the morning, while he was at the worst, she was talking with Clementina, who had called to see whether she would not go and hear the preacher of whom he had spoken with such fervour. Florimel laughed.

"You seem to take everything for gospel Malcolm says, Clementina!"

"Certainly not," returned Clementina, rather annoyed. "Gospel nowadays is what nobody disputes and nobody heeds; but I do heed what Malcolm says, and intend to find out, if I can, whether there is any reality in it. I thought you had a high opinion of your groom!"

"I would take his word for anything a man's word can be taken for," said Florimel.

"But you don't set much store by his judgment?"

"Oh, I daresay he's right. But I don't care for the things you like so much to talk with him about. He's a sort of poet, anyhow, and poets must be absurd. They are always either dreaming or talking about their dreams. They care nothing for the realities of life. No – if you want advice, you must go to your lawyer or clergyman, or some man of common sense, neither groom nor poet."

"Then, Florimel, it comes to this – that this groom of yours is one of the truest of men, and one who possessed your father's confidence, but you are so much his superior that you are capable of judging him, and justified in despising his judgment."

"Only in practical matters, Clementina."

"And duty towards God is with you such a practical matter that you cannot listen to anything he has got to say about it."

Florimel shrugged her shoulders.

"For my part, I would give all I have to know there was a God worth believing in."

"Clementina!"

"What?"

"Of course there is a God. It is very horrible to deny it."

"Which is worse – to deny it, or to deny him? Now, I confess to doubting it – that is, the fact of a God; but you seem to me to deny God himself, for you admit there is a God – think it very wicked to deny that, and yet you don't take interest enough in him to wish to learn anything about him. You won't think, Florimel. I don't fancy you ever really think."

Florimel again laughed.

"I am glad," she said, "that you don't judge me incapable of that high art. But it is not so very long since Malcolm used to hint something much the same about yourself, my lady!"

"Then he was quite right," returned Clementina. "I am only just beginning to think, and if I can find a teacher, here I am, his pupil."

"Well, I suppose I can spare my groom quite enough to teach you all he knows," Florimel said, with what Clementina took for a marked absence of expression. She reddened. But she was not one to defend herself before her principles.

"If he can, why should he not?" she said. "But it was of his friend Mr Graham I was thinking- – not himself."

"You cannot tell whether he has got anything to teach you."

"Your groom's testimony gives likelihood enough to make it my duty to go and see. I intend to find the place this evening."

"It must be some little ranting methodist conventicle. He would not be allowed to preach in a church, you know."

"Of course not! The church of England is like the apostle that forbade the man casting out devils, and got forbid himself for it – with this difference that she won't be forbid. Well, she chooses her portion with Dives and not Lazarus. She is the most arrant respecter of persons I know, and her Christianity is worse than a farce. It was that first of all that drove me to doubt. If I could find a place where everything was just the opposite, the poorer it was the better I should like it. It makes me feel quite wicked to hear a smug parson reading the gold ring and the goodly apparel, while the pew openers beneath are illustrating in dumb show the very thing the apostle is pouring out the vial of his indignation upon over their heads; – doing it calmly and without a suspicion, for the parson, while he reads, is rejoicing in his heart over the increasing aristocracy of his congregation. The farce is fit to make a devil in torment laugh."

Once more, Florimel laughed aloud.

"Another revolution, Clementina, and we shall have you heading the canaille to destroy Westminster Abbey."

"I would follow any leader to destroy falsehood," said Clementina. "No canaille will take that up until it meddles with their stomachs or their pew rents."

"Really, Clementina, you are the worst Jacobin I ever heard talk. My groom is quite an aristocrat beside you."

"Not an atom more than I am. I do acknowledge an aristocracy – but it is one neither of birth nor of intellect nor of wealth."

"What is there besides to make one?"

"Something I hope to find before long. What if there be indeed a kingdom and an aristocracy of life and truth! – Will you or will you not go with me to hear this schoolmaster?"

"I will go anywhere with you, if it were only to be seen with such a beauty," said Florimel, throwing her arms round her neck and kissing her.

Clementina gently returned the embrace, and the thing was settled.

The sound of their wheels, pausing in swift revolution with the clangor of iron hoofs on rough stones at the door of the chapel, refreshed the diaconal heart like the sound of water in the desert. For the first time in the memory of the oldest, the dayspring of success seemed on the point of breaking over Hope Chapel. The ladies were ushered in by Mr Marshal himself, to Clementina's disgust and Florimel's amusement, with much the same attention as his own shop walker would have shown to carriage customers – How could a man who taught light and truth be found in such a mean entourage? But the setting was not the jewel. A real stone might be found in a copper ring. So said Clementina to herself as she sat waiting her hoped for instructor.

Mrs Catanach settled her broad back into its corner, chuckling over her own wisdom and foresight. Her seat was at the pulpit end of the chapel, at right angles to almost all the rest of the pews – chosen because thence, if indeed she could not well see the preacher, she could get a good glimpse of nearly everyone that entered. Keen sighted both physically and intellectually, she recognized Florimel the moment she saw her.

"Twa doos mair to the boody craw!" she laughed to herself. "Ae man thrashin', an' twa birdies pickin'!" she went on, quoting the old nursery nonsense. Then she stooped, and let down her veil. Florimel hated her, and therefore might know her.

"It's the day o' the Lord wi' auld Sanny Grame!" she resumed to herself, as she lifted her head. "He's stickit nae mair, but a chosen trumpet at last! Foul fa' 'im for a wearifu' cratur for a' that! He has nowther balm o' grace nor pith o' damnation.

"Yon laad Flemin', 'at preached i' the Baillies' Barn aboot the dowgs gaein' roon' an' roon' the wa's o' the New Jeroozlem, gien he had but hauden thegither an' no gean to the worms sae sune, wad hae dung a score o' 'im. But Sanny angers me to that degree 'at but for rizons – like yon twa – I wad gang oot i' the mids o' ane o' 's palahvers, an' never come back, though I ha'e a haill quarter o' my sittin' to sit oot yet, an' it cost me dear, an' fits the auld back o' me no that ill."

When Mr Graham rose to read the psalm, great was Clementina's disappointment: he looked altogether, as she thought, of a sort with the place – mean and dreary – of the chapel very chapelly, and she did not believe it could be the man of whom Malcolm had spoken. By a strange coincidence however, a kind of occurrence as frequent as strange, he read for his text that same passage about the gold ring and the vile raiment, in which we learn how exactly the behaviour of the early Jewish churches corresponded to that of the later English ones, and Clementina soon began to alter her involuntary judgment of him when she found herself listening to an utterance beside which her most voluble indignation would have been but as the babble of a child.

Sweeping, incisive, withering, blasting denunciation, logic and poetry combining in one torrent of genuine eloquence, poured confusion and dismay upon head and heart of all who set themselves up for pillars of the church without practising the first principles of the doctrine of Christ – men who, professing to gather their fellows together in the name of Christ, conducted the affairs of the church on the principles of hell – men so blind and dull and slow of heart, that they would never know what the outer darkness meant until it had closed around them – men who paid court to the rich for their money, and to the poor for their numbers – men who sought gain first, safety next, and the will of God not at all – men whose presentation of Christianity was enough to drive the world to a preferable infidelity.

Clementina listened with her very soul. All doubt as to whether this was Malcolm's friend, vanished within two minutes of his commencement. If she rejoiced a little more than was humble or healthful in finding that such a man thought as she thought, she gained this good notwithstanding – the presence and power of a man who believed in righteousness the doctrine he taught. Also she perceived that the principles of equality he held, were founded on the infinite possibilities of the individual – and of the race only through the individual; and that he held these principles with an absoluteness, an earnestness, a simplicity, that dwarfed her loudest objurgation to the uneasy murmuring of a sleeper. She could not but trust him, and her hope grew great that perhaps for her he held the key of the kingdom of heaven. She saw that if what this man said was true, then the gospel was represented by men who knew nothing of its real nature, and by such she bad been led into a false judgment of it.

"If such a man," said the schoolmaster in conclusion, "would but once represent to himself that the man whom he regards as beneath him, may nevertheless be immeasurably above him – and that after no arbitrary judgment, but according to the absolute facts of creation, the scale of the kingdom of God, in which being is rank; if he could persuade himself of the possibility that he may yet have to worship before the feet of those on whom he looks down as on the creatures of another and meaner order of creation, would it not sting him to rise, and, lest this should be one of such, make offer of his chair to the poor man in the vile raiment? Would he ever more, all his life long, dare to say, 'Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool?'"

During the week that followed, Clementina reflected with growing delight on what she had heard, and looked forward to hearing more of a kind correspondent on the approaching Sunday. Nor did the shock of the disappearance of Florimel with Malcolm abate her desire to be taught by Malcolm's friend.

Lady Bellair was astounded, mortified, enraged. Liftore turned grey with passion, then livid with mortification, at the news. Not one of all their circle, as Florimel had herself foreseen, doubted for a moment that she had run away with that groom of hers. Indeed, upon examination, it became evident that the scheme had been for some time in hand: the yacht they had gone on board had been lying there for months; and although she was her own mistress, and might marry whom she pleased, it was no wonder she had run away, for how could she have held her face to it, or up after it?

Lady Clementina accepted the general conclusion, but judged it individually. She had more reason to be distressed at what seemed to have taken place than anyone else; indeed it stung her to the heart, wounding her worse than in its first stunning effects she was able to know; yet she thought better rather than worse of Florimel because of it. What she did not like in her with reference to the affair was the depreciatory manner in which she had always spoken of Malcolm. If genuine, it was quite inconsistent with due regard for the man for whom she was yet prepared to sacrifice so much; if, on the other hand, her slight opinion of his judgment was a pretence, then she had been disloyal to the just prerogatives of friendship.

The latter part of that week was the sorest time Clementina had ever passed. But, like a true woman, she fought her own misery and sense of loss, as well as her annoyance and anxiety, – constantly saying to herself that, be the thing as it might, she could never cease to be glad that she had known Malcolm MacPhail.

CHAPTER LIII: A NEW PUPIL

The sermon Lady Clementina heard with such delight had followed one levelled at the common and right worldly idea of success harboured by each, and unquestioned by one of the chief men of the community: together they caused a strange uncertain sense of discomfort in the mind diaconal. Slow to perceive that that idea, nauseous in his presentment of it, was the very same cherished and justified by themselves; unwilling also to believe that in his denunciation of respecters of persons they themselves had a full share, they yet felt a little uneasy from the vague whispers of their consciences on the side of the neglected principles enounced, clashing with the less vague conviction that if those whispers were encouraged and listened to, the ruin of their hopes for their chapel, and their influence in connection with it, must follow. They eyed each other doubtfully, and there appeared a general tendency amongst them to close pressed lips and single shakes of the head. But there were other forces at work – tending in the same direction.

Whatever may have been the influence of the schoolmaster upon the congregation gathered in Hope Chapel, there was one on whom his converse, supplemented by his preaching, had taken genuine hold. Frederick Marshal had begun to open his eyes to the fact that, regarded as a profession, the ministry, as they called it in their communion, was the meanest way of making a living in the whole creation, one deserving the contempt of every man honest enough to give honourable work, that is, work worth the money, for the money paid him. Also he had a glimmering insight, on the other hand, into the truth of what the dominie said – that it was the noblest of martyrdoms to the man who, sent by God, loved the truth with his whole soul, and was never happier than when bearing witness of it, except, indeed, in those blessed moments when receiving it of the Father. In consequence of this opening of his eyes the youth recoiled with dismay from the sacrilegious mockery of which he had been guilty in meditating the presumption of teaching holy things of which the sole sign that he knew anything was now afforded by this same recoil. At last he was not far from the kingdom of heaven, though whether he was to be sent to persuade men that that kingdom was amongst them, and must be in them, remained a question.

On the morning after the latter of those two sermons, Frederick, as they sat at breakfast, succeeded, with no small effort, for he feared his mother, in blurting out to his father the request that he might be taken into the counting house; and when indignantly requested, over the top of the teapot, to explain himself, declared that he found it impossible to give his mind to a course of education which could only end in the disappointment of his parents, seeing he was at length satisfied that he had no call to the ministry. His father was not displeased at the thought of having him at the shop; but his mother was for some moments speechless with angry tribulation. Recovering herself, with scornful bitterness she requested to know to what tempter he had been giving ear – for tempted he must have been ere son of hers would have been guilty of backsliding from the cause; of taking his hand from the plough and looking behind him. The youth returned such answers as, while they satisfied his father he was right, served only to convince his mother, where yet conviction was hardly needed, that she had to thank the dominie for his defection, his apostasy from the church to the world.

Incapable of perceiving that now first there was hope of a genuine disciple in the child of her affection, she was filled with the gall of disappointment, and with spite against the man who had taught her son how worse than foolish it is to aspire to teach before one has learned; nor did she fail to cast scathing reflections on her husband, in that he had brought home a viper in his bosom, a wolf into his fold, the wretched minion of a worldly church to lead her son away captive at his will; and partly no doubt from his last uncomfortable sermons, but mainly from the play of Mrs Marshal's tongue on her husband's tympanum, the deacons in full conclave agreed that no further renewal of the invitation to preach "for them" should be made to the schoolmaster – just the end of the business Mr Graham had expected, and for which he had provided. On Tuesday morning he smiled to himself, and wondered whether, if he were to preach in his own schoolroom the next Sunday evening, anyone would come to hear him. On Saturday he received a cool letter of thanks for his services, written by the ironmonger in the name of the deacons, enclosing a cheque, tolerably liberal as ideas went, in acknowledgment of them. The cheque Mr Graham returned, saying that, as he was not a preacher by profession, he had no right to take fees. It was a half holiday: he walked up to Hampstead Heath, and was paid for everything, in sky and cloud, fresh air, and a glorious sunset.

When the end of her troubled week came, and the Sunday of her expectation brought lovely weather, with a certain vague suspicion of peace, into the regions of Mayfair and Spitalfields, Clementina walked across the Regent's Park to Hope Chapel, and its morning observances; but thought herself poorly repaid for her exertions by having to listen to a dreadful sermon and worse prayers from Mr Masquar – one of the chief priests of Commonplace – a comfortable idol to serve, seeing he accepts as homage to himself all that any man offers to his own person, opinions, or history. But Clementina contrived to endure it, comforting herself that she had made a mistake in supposing Mr Graham preached in the morning.

In the evening her carriage once again drew up with clang and clatter at the door of the chapel. But her coachman was out of temper at having to leave the bosom of his family circle – as he styled the table that upheld his pot of beer and jar of tobacco – of a Sunday, and sought relief to his feelings in giving his horses a lesson in crawling; the result of which was fortunate for his mistress: when she entered, the obnoxious Mr Masquar was already reading the hymn. She turned at once and made for the door.

But her carriage was already gone. A strange sense of loneliness and desolation seized her. The place had grown hateful to her, and she would have fled from it. Yet she lingered in the porch. The eyes of the man in the pulpit, with his face of false solemnity and low importance – she seemed to feel the look of them on her back, yet she lingered. Now that Malcolm was gone, how was she to learn when Mr Graham would be preaching?

"If you please, ma'am," said a humble and dejected voice.

She turned and saw the seamed and smoky face of the pew opener, who had been watching her from the lobby, and had crept out after her. She dropped a courtesy, and went on hurriedly, with an anxious look now and then over her shoulder – "Oh, ma'am! we shan't see 'im no more. Our people here – they're very good people, but they don't like to be told the truth. It seems to me as if they knowed it so well they thought as how there was no need for them to mind it."

"You don't mean that Mr Graham has given up preaching here?"

"They've given up askin' of 'im to preach, lady. But if ever there was a good man in that pulpit, Mr Graham he do be that man!"

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Yes, ma'am; but it would be hard to direct you." Here she looked in at the door of the chapel with a curious half frightened glance, as if to satisfy herself that the inner door was closed. "But," she went on, "they won't miss me now the service is begun, and I can be back before it's over. I'll show you where, ma'am."

"I should be greatly obliged to you," said Clementina, "only I am sorry to give you the trouble."

"To tell the truth, I'm only too glad to get away," she returned, "for the place it do look like a cementery, now he's out of it."

"Was he so kind to you?"

"He never spoke word to me, as to myself like, no, nor never gave me sixpence, like Mr Masquar do; but he give me strength in my heart to bear up, and that's better than meat or money."

It was a good half hour's walk, and during it Clementina held what conversation she might with her companion. It was not much the woman had to say of a general sort. She knew little beyond her own troubles and the help that met them, but what else are the two main forces whose composition results in upward motion? Her world was very limited – the houses in which she went charing, the chapel she swept and dusted, the neighbours with whom she gossipped, the little shops where she bought the barest needs of her bare life; but it was at least large enough to leave behind her; and if she was not one to take the kingdom of heaven by force, she was yet one to creep quietly into it. The earthly life of such as she – immeasurably less sordid than that of the poet who will not work for his daily bread, or that of the speculator who, having settled money on his wife, risks that of his neighbour – passing away like a cloud, will hang in their west, stained indeed, but with gold, blotted, but with roses. Dull as it all was now, Clementina yet gained from her unfoldings a new outlook upon life, its needs, its sorrows, its consolations, and its hopes; nor was there any vulgar pity in the smile of the one, or of degrading acknowledgment in the tears of the other, when a piece of gold passed from hand to hand, as they parted.