The Marquis of Lossie. George MacDonald
such an infernal brute!"
"You can't say too ill of her. But I fancy a gaol chaplain sometimes takes the most interest in the worst villain under his charge. I should be a proud man to make her fit to live with decent people."
"I'm afraid she'll be too much for you. At last you'll have to part with her, I fear."
"If she had bitten you as often as she has me, sir, you wouldn't part with her. Besides, it would be wrong to sell her. She would only be worse with anyone else. But, indeed, though you will hardly believe it, she is better than she was."
"Then what must she have been!"
"You may well say that, sir!"
"Here your mistress tells me you want my assistance in choosing another horse."
"Yes, sir – to attend upon her in London."
"I don't profess to be knowing in horses: what made you think of me?"
"I saw how you sat your own horse, sir, and I heard you say you bought him out of a butterman's cart, and treated him like a human being: that was enough for me, sir. I've long had the notion that the beasts, poor things, have a half sleeping, half waking human soul in them, and it was a great pleasure to hear you say something of the same sort. 'That gentleman,' I said to myself, '– he and I would understand one another.'"
"I am glad you think so," said Lenorme, with entire courtesy. – It was not merely that the very doubtful recognition of his profession by society had tended to keep him clear of his prejudices, but both as a painter and a man he found the young fellow exceedingly attractive; – as a painter from the rare combination of such strength with such beauty, and as a man from a certain yet rarer clarity of nature which to the vulgar observer seems fatuity until he has to encounter it in action, when the contrast is like meeting a thunderbolt. Naturally the dishonest takes the honest for a fool. Beyond his understanding, he imagines him beneath it. But Lenorme, although so much more a man of the world, was able in a measure to look into Malcolm and appreciate him. His nature and his art combined in enabling him to do this.
"You see, sir," Malcolm went on, encouraged by the simplicity of Lenorme's manner, "if they were nothing like us, how should we be able to get on with them at all, teach them anything, or come a hair nearer them, do what we might? For all her wickedness I firmly believe Kelpie has a sort of regard for me – I won't call it affection, but perhaps it comes as near that as may be possible in the time to one of her temper."
"Now I hope you will permit me, Mr MacPhail," said Lenorme, who had been paying more attention to Malcolm than to his words, "to give a violent wrench to the conversation, and turn it upon yourself. You can't be surprised, and I hope you will not be annoyed, if I say you strike one as not altogether like your calling. No London groom I have ever spoken to, in the least resembles you. How is it?"
"I hope you don't mean to imply, sir, that I don't know my business," returned Malcolm, laughing.
"Anything but that! It were nearer the thing to say, that for all I know you may understand mine as well."
"I wish I did, sir. Except the pictures at Lossie House and those in Portland Place, I've never seen one in my life. About most of them I must say I find it hard to imagine what better the world is for them. Mr Graham says that no work that doesn't tend to make the world better makes it richer. If he were a heathen, he says, he would build a temple to Ses, the sister of Psyche."
"Ses? – I don't remember her," said Lenorme.
"The moth, sir; – 'the moth and the rust,' you know."
"Yes, yes; now I know! Capital! Only more things may tend to make the world better than some people think. – Who is this Mr Graham of yours? He must be no common man."
"You are right there, sir; there is not another like him in the whole world, I believe."
And thereupon Malcolm set himself to give the painter an idea of the schoolmaster.
When they had talked about him for a little while,
"Well, all this accounts for your being a scholar," said Lenorme; "but –"
"I am little enough of that, sir," interrupted Malcolm. "Any Scotch boy that likes to learn finds the way open to him."
"I am aware of that. But were you really reading Epictetus when we left you in the park this morning?"
"Yes, sir: why not?"
"In the original?"
"Yes, sir; but not very readily. I am a poor Greek scholar. But my copy has a rough Latin translation on the opposite page, and that helps me out. It's not difficult. You would think nothing of it if it had been Cornelius Nepos, or Cordery's Colloquies. It's only a better, not a more difficult book."
"I don't know about that. It's not every one who can read Greek that can understand Epictetus. Tell me what you have learned from him?"
"That would be hard to do. A man is very ready to forget how he came first to think of the things he loves best. You see they are as much a necessity of your being as they are of the man's who thought them first. I can no more do without the truth than Plato. It is as much my needful food and as fully mine to possess as his. His having it, Mr Graham says, was for my sake as well as his own. – It's just like what Sir Thomas Browne says about the faces of those we love – that we cannot retain the idea of them because they are ourselves. Those that help the world must be served like their master and a good deal forgotten, I fancy. Of course they don't mind it. – I remember another passage I think says something to the same purpose – one in Epictetus himself," continued Malcolm, drawing the little book from his pocket and turning over the leaves, while Lenorme sat waiting, wondering, and careful not to interrupt him.
He turned to the forty-second chapter, and began to read from the Greek.
"I've forgotten all the Greek I ever had," said Lenorme.
Then Malcolm turned to the opposite page and began to read the Latin.
"Tut! tut!" said Lenorme, "I can't follow your Scotch pronunciation."
"That's a pity," said Malcolm: "it's the right way."
"I don't doubt it. You Scotch are always in the right! But just read it off in English – will you?"
Thus adjured, Malcolm read slowly and with choice of word and phrase
"'And if any one shall say unto thee, that thou knowest nothing, notwithstanding thou must not be vexed: then know thou that thou hast begun thy work.' – That is," explained Malcolm, "when you keep silence about principles in the presence of those that are incapable of understanding them. – 'For the sheep also do not manifest to the shepherds how much they have eaten, by producing fodder; but, inwardly digesting their food, they produce outwardly wool and milk. And thou therefore set not forth principles before the unthinking, but the actions that result from the digestion of them.' – That last is not quite literal, but I think it's about right," concluded Malcolm, putting the book again in the breast pocket of his silver buttoned coat. "– That's the passage I thought of, but I see now it won't apply. He speaks of not saying what you know; I spoke of forgetting where you got it."
"Come now," said Lenorme, growing more and more interested in his new acquaintance, "tell me something about your life. Account for yourself. – If you will make a friendship of it, you must do that."
"I will, sir," said Malcolm, and with the word began to tell him most things he could think of as bearing upon his mental history up to and after the time also when his birth was disclosed to him. In omitting that disclosure he believed he had without it quite accounted for himself. Through the whole recital he dwelt chiefly on the lessons and influences of the schoolmaster.
"Well, I must admit," said Lenorme when he had ended, "that you are no longer unintelligible, not to say incredible. You have had a splendid education, in which I hope you give the herring and Kelpie their due share."
He sat silently regarding him for a few moments. Then he said:
"I'll tell you what now: if I help you to buy a horse, you must help me to paint a picture."
"I don't know how I'm to do that," said Malcolm, "but if you do,