The Marquis of Lossie. George MacDonald
happy to do what I can."
"Then I'll tell you. – But you're not to tell anybody: it's a secret. – I have discovered that there is no suitable portrait of Lady Lossie's father. It is a great pity. His brother and his father and grandfather are all in Portland Place, in Highland costume, as chiefs of their clan; his place only is vacant. Lady Lossie, however, has in her possession one or two miniatures of him, which, although badly painted, I should think may give the outlines of his face and head with tolerable correctness. From the portraits of his predecessors, and from Lady Lossie herself, I gain some knowledge of what is common to the family; and from all together I hope to gather and paint what will be recognizable by her as a likeness of her father – which afterwards I hope to better by her remarks. These remarks I hope to get first from her feelings unadulterated by criticism, through the surprise of coming upon the picture suddenly; afterwards from her judgment at its leisure. Now I remember seeing you wait at table – the first time I saw you – in the Highland dress: will you come to me so dressed, and let me paint from you?"
"I'll do better than that, sir," cried Malcolm, eagerly. "I'll get up from Lossie Home my lord's very dress that he wore when he went to court – his jewelled dirk, and Andrew Ferrara broadsword with the hilt of real silver. That'll greatly help your design upon my lady, for he dressed up in them all more than once just to please her."
"Thank you," said Lenorme very heartily; "that will be of immense advantage. Write at once."
"I will, sir. – Only I'm a bigger man than my – late master, and you must mind that."
"I'll see to it. You get the clothes, and all the rest of the accoutrements – rich with barbaric gems and gold, and"
"Neither gems nor gold, sir; – honest Scotch cairngorms and plain silver," said Malcolm.
"I only quoted Milton," returned Lenorme.
"Then you should have quoted correctly, sir. – 'Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,' – that's the line, and you can't better it. Mr Graham always pulled me up if I didn't quote correctly. – By the bye, sir, some say it's kings barbaric, but there's barbaric gold in Virgil."
"I dare say you are right," said Lenorme. "But you're far too learned for me."
"Don't make game of me, sir. I know two or three books pretty well, and when I get a chance I can't help talking about them. It's so seldom now I can get a mouthful of Milton. There's no cave here to go into, and roll the mimic thunder in your mouth. If the people here heard me reading loud out, they would call me mad. It's a mercy in this London, if a working man get loneliness enough to say his prayers in!"
"You do say your prayers then?" asked Lenorme, looking at him curiously.
"Yes; don't you, sir? You had so much sense about the beasts I thought you must be a man that said his prayers."
Lenorme was silent. He was not altogether innocent of saying prayers; but of late years it had grown a more formal and gradually a rarer thing. One reason of this was that it had never come into his head that God cared about pictures, or had the slightest interest whether he painted well or ill. If a man's earnest calling, to which of necessity the greater part of his thought is given, is altogether dissociated in his mind from his religion, it is not wonderful that his prayers should by degrees wither and die. The question is whether they ever had much vitality. But one mighty negative was yet true of Lenorme: he had not got in his head, still less had he ever cherished in his heart, the thought that there was anything fine in disbelieving in a God, or anything contemptible in imagining communication with a being of grander essence than himself. That in which Socrates rejoiced with exultant humility, many a youth nowadays thinks himself a fine fellow for casting from him with ignorant scorn.
A true conception of the conversation above recorded can hardly be had except my reader will take the trouble to imagine the contrast between the Scotch accent and inflection, the largeness and prolongation of vowel sounds, and, above all, the Scotch tone of Malcolm, and the pure, clear articulation, and decided utterance of the perfect London speech of Lenorme. It was something like the difference between the blank verse of Young and the prose of Burke.
The silence endured so long that Malcolm began to fear he had hurt his new friend, and thought it better to take his leave.
"I'll go and write to Mrs Courthope – that's the housekeeper, tonight, to send up the things at once. When would it be convenient for you to go and look at some horses with me, Mr Lenorme?" he said.
"I shall be at home all tomorrow," answered the painter, "and ready to go with you any time you like to come for me."
As he spoke he held out his hand, and they parted like old friends.
CHAPTER XXIV: A LADY
The next morning, Malcolm took Kelpie into the park, and gave her a good breathing. He had thought to jump the rails, and let her have her head, but he found there were too many park keepers and police about: he saw he could do little for her that way. He was turning home with her again when one of her evil fits came upon her, this time taking its first form in a sudden stiffening of every muscle: she stood stock still with flaming eyes. I suspect we human beings know but little of the fierceness with which the vortices of passion rage in the more purely animal natures. This beginning he knew well would end in a wild paroxysm of rearing and plunging. He had more than once tried the exorcism of patience, sitting sedate upon her back until she chose to move; but on these occasions the tempest that followed had been of the very worst description; so that he had concluded it better to bring on the crisis, thereby sure at least to save time; and after he had adopted this mode with her, attacks of the sort, if no less violent, had certainly become fewer. The moment therefore that symptoms of an approaching fit showed themselves, he used his spiked heels with vigour. Upon this occasion he had a stiff tussle with her, but as usual gained the victory, and was riding slowly along the Row, Kelpie tossing up now her head now her heels in indignant protest against obedience in general and enforced obedience in particular, when a lady on horseback, who had come galloping from the opposite direction, with her groom behind her, pulled up, and lifted her hand with imperative grace: she had seen something of what had been going on. Malcolm reined in. But Kelpie, after her nature, was now as unwilling to stop as she had been before to proceed, and the fight began again, with some difference of movement and aspect, but the spurs once more playing a free part.
"Man! man!" cried the lady, in most musical reproof, "do you know what you are about?"
"It would be a bad job for her and me too if I did not, my lady," said Malcolm, whom her appearance and manner impressed with a conviction of rank, and as he spoke he smiled in the midst of the struggle: he seldom got angry with Kelpie. But the smile instead of taking from the apparent roughness of his speech, only made his conduct appear in the lady's eyes more cruel.
"How is it possible you can treat the poor animal so unkindly – and in cold blood too?" she said, and an indescribable tone of pleading ran through the rebuke. "Why, her poor sides are actually –" A shudder, and look of personal distress completed the sentence.
"You don't know what she is, my lady, or you would not think it necessary to intercede for her."
"But if she is naughty, is that any reason why you should be cruel?"
"No, my lady; but it is the best reason why I should try to make her good."
"You will never make her good that way."
"Improvement gives ground for hope," said Malcolm.
"But you must not treat a poor dumb animal as you would a responsible human being."
"She's not so very poor, my lady. She has all she wants, and does nothing to earn it – nothing to speak of; and nothing at all with good will. For her dumbness, that's a mercy. If she could speak she wouldn't be fit to live among decent people. But for that matter, if some one hadn't taken her in hand, dumb as she is, she would have been shot long ago."
"Better that than live with such usage."
"I don't think she would agree with you, my lady. My fear is that, for as cruel as it looks to your ladyship, take it altogether, she enjoys the fight. In any case, I am certain she has more regard for me than any other being in the universe."
"Who