Marquis of Lossie by George MacDonald

Author:George MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

— Thirty-One —

The Ride Home

Florimel was offended with Malcolm. He had put her confidence in him to shame, speaking of things he should not have. But Clementina was not only older than Florimel, but in her loving endeavours had heard many a pitiful story and was now saddened by the tale rather than shocked at the teller. Indeed, Malcolm’s mode of acquainting her with the grounds of the feeling she had challenged pleased both her heart and her sense of what was becoming, while as a partisan of women, finding a man also of their part, she was ready to offer him the gratitude of womankind.

“What a rough diamond is here!” she thought. “Yet what fault could the most fastidious find with his manners? True, he speaks as a servant. But where would be his manners if he did not? But in no way of thinking is he in the smallest degree servile. He is like a great pearl, clean out of the sea—bred, it is true, in the midst of strange surroundings, but pure as the moonlight. And if a man, so environed, yet has grown so grand, what might he not become with such privileges as—”

Good Clementina! what did she mean? Did she imagine that such mere gifts as she might give him could do for him more than the great sea, with the torment and conquest of its winds and tempests, more than his own ministrations of love and victories over passion and pride? She was not yet capable of perceiving, either that what she had in her thought to offer might hurt him, or that it could do him little good.

Not for a moment did she imagine him in love with her. Possibly she admired him too much to attribute to him such an intolerable and insolent presumption as that would have appeared to her own inferior self. In one resolve she was confident, that her behaviour toward him should be such as to keep him just where he was, affording him no smallest excuse for taking one step nearer. And they would soon be in London, where she would see nothing—or next to nothing—more of him. But should she ever cease to thank God—that is, if ever she came to find him—that in this groom he had shown her what he could do in the way of making a man? Heartily she wished she knew a nobleman or two like him. In the meantime, she meant to enjoy with carefulness the ride to London, after which things should be as before they left.

The morning arrived. they finished breakfast, the horses came round, all but Kelpie. The ladies mounted. Ah, what a morning to leave the country and go back to London! The sun shone clear on the dark pine woods, the birds were radiant in song, all under the trees the ferns were unrolling each its mystery of ever-generating life. A gracious mystery it was—in the air, in the sun, in the earth, in their own hearts.

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