MARQUISE OF LOSSIE'S ADVENTURES: Malcolm & The Marquis's Secret. George MacDonald
themselves, creeping out on the ebb tide. Nor had he waited long before a boat appeared, then another and another—six huge oars, ponderous to toil withal, urging each from the shelter of the harbour out into the wide weltering plain. The fishing boat of that time was not decked as now, and each, with every lift of its bows, revealed to their eyes a gaping hollow, ready, if a towering billow should break above it, to be filled with sudden death. One by one the whole fleet crept out, and ever as they gained the breeze, up went the red sails, and filled: aside leaned every boat from the wind, and went dancing away over the frolicking billows towards the sunset, its sails, deep dyed in oak bark, shining redder and redder in the growing redness of the sinking sun.
Nor did Portlossie alone send out her boats, like huge seabirds warring on the live treasures of the deep; from beyond the headlands east and west, out they glided on slow red wing,—from Scaurnose, from Sandend, from Clamrock, from the villages all along the coast,—spreading as they came, each to its work apart through all the laborious night, to rejoin its fellows only as home drew them back in the clear gray morning, laden and slow with the harvest of the stars. But the night lay between, into which they were sailing over waters of heaving green that for ever kept tossing up roses—a night whose curtain was a horizon built up of steady blue, but gorgeous with passing purple and crimson, and flashing with molten gold.
Malcolm was not one of those to whom the sea is but a pond for fish, and the sky a storehouse of wind and rain, sunshine and snow: he stood for a moment gazing, lost in pleasure. Then he turned to Lady Florimel: she had thrown her daisies on the sand, appeared to be deep in her book, and certainly caught nothing of the splendour before her beyond the red light on her page.
"Saw ye ever a bonnier sicht, my leddy?" said Malcolm.
She looked up, and saw, and gazed in silence. Her nature was full of poetic possibilities; and now a formless thought foreshadowed itself in a feeling she did not understand: why should such a sight as this make her feel sad? The vital connection between joy and effort had begun from afar to reveal itself with the question she now uttered.
"What is it all for?" she asked dreamily, her eyes gazing out on the calm ecstasy of colour, which seemed to have broken the bonds of law, and ushered in a new chaos, fit matrix of new heavens and new earth.
"To catch herrin'," answered Malcolm, ignorant of the mood that prompted the question, and hence mistaking its purport.
But a falling doubt had troubled the waters of her soul, and through the ripple she could descry it settling into form. She was silent for a moment.
"I want to know," she resumed, "why it looks as if some great thing were going on. Why is all this pomp and show? Something ought to be at hand. All I see is the catching of a few miserable fish! If it were the eve of a glorious battle now, I could understand it—if those were the little English boats rushing to attack the Spanish Armada, for instance. But they are only gone to catch fish. Or if they were setting out to discover the Isles of the West, the country beyond the sunset!—but this jars."
"I canna answer ye a' at ance, my leddy," said Malcolm; "I maun tak time to think aboot it. But I ken brawly what ye mean." Even as he spoke he withdrew, and, descending the mound, walked away beyond the bored craig, regardless now of the far lessening sails and the sinking sun. The motes of the twilight were multiplying fast as he returned along the shore side of the dune, but Lady Florimel had vanished from its crest. He ran to the top: thence, in the dim of the twilight, he saw her slow retreating form, phantom-like, almost at the grated door of the tunnel, which, like that of a tomb, appeared ready to draw her in, and yield her no more.
"My leddy, my leddy," he cried, "winna ye bide for 't?"
He went bounding after her like a deer. She heard him call, and stood holding the door half open.
"It's the battle o' Armageddon, my leddy," he cried, as he came within hearing distance.
"The battle of what?" she exclaimed, bewildered. "I really can't understand your savage Scotch."
"Hoot, my leddy! the battle o' Armageddon 's no ane o' the Scots battles; it's the battle atween the richt and the wrang, 'at ye read aboot i' the buik o' the Revelations."
"What on earth are you talking about?" returned Lady Florimel in dismay, beginning to fear that her squire was losing his senses.
"It's jist what ye was sayin,' my leddy: sic a pomp as yon bude to hing abune a gran' battle some gait or ither."
"What has the catching of fish to do with a battle in the Revelations?" said the girl, moving a little within the door.
"Weel, my leddy, gien I took in han' to set it furth to ye, I wad hae to tell ye a' that Mr Graham has been learnin' me sin ever I can min.' He says 'at the whole economy o' natur is fashiont unco like that o' the kingdom o' haven: its jist a gradation o' services, an' the highest en' o' ony animal is to contreebute to the life o' ane higher than itsel'; sae that it's the gran' preevilege o' the fish we tak, to be aten by human bein's, an' uphaud what's abune them."
"That's a poor consolation to the fish," said Lady Florimel.
"Hoo ken ye that, my leddy? Ye can tell nearhan' as little aboot the hert o' a herrin'—sic as it has—as the herrin' can tell aboot yer ain, whilk, I'm thinkin', maun be o' the lairgest size."
"How should you know anything about my heart, pray?" she asked, with more amusement than offence.
"Jist by my ain," answered Malcolm.
Lady Florimel began to fear she must have allowed the fisher lad more liberty than was proper, seeing he dared avow that he knew the heart of a lady of her position by his own. But indeed Malcolm was wrong, for in the scale of hearts, Lady Florimel's was far below his. She stepped quite within the door, and was on the point of shutting it, but something about the youth restrained her, exciting at least her curiosity; his eyes glowed with a deep, quiet light, and his face, even grand at the moment, had a greater influence upon her than she knew. Instead therefore of interposing the door between them, she only kept it poised, ready to fall to the moment the sanity of the youth should become a hair's breadth more doubtful than she already considered it.
"It's a' pairt o' ae thing, my leddy," Malcolm resumed. "The herrin 's like the fowk 'at cairries the mate an' the pooder an' sic like for them 'at does the fechtin'. The hert o' the leevin' man's the place whaur the battle's foucht, an' it's aye gaein' on an' on there atween God an' Sawtan; an' the fish they haud fowk up till 't."
"Do you mean that the herrings help you to fight for God?" said Lady Florimel with a superior smile.
"Aither for God or for the deevil, my leddy—that depen's upo' the fowk themsel's. I say it hauds them up to fecht, an' the thing maun be fouchten oot. Fowk to fecht maun live, an' the herrin' hauds the life i' them, an' sae the catchin' o' the herrin' comes in to be a pairt o' the battle."
"Wouldn't it be more sensible to say that the battle is between the fishermen and the sea, for the sake of their wives and children?" suggested Lady Florimel supremely.
"Na, my leddy, it wadna he half sae sensible, for it wadna justifee the grandur that hings ower the fecht. The battle wi' the sea 's no sae muckle o' an affair. An', 'deed, gien it warna that the wives an' the verra weans hae themsel's to fecht i' the same battle o' guid an' ill, I dinna see the muckle differ there wad be atween them an' the fish, nor what for they sudna ate ane anither as the craturs i' the watter du. But gien 't be the battle I say, there can be no pomp o' sea or sky ower gran' for 't; an' it's a weel waured (expended) gien it but haud the gude anes merry an' strong, an' up to their work. For that, weel may the sun shine a celestial rosy reid, an' weel may the boatie row, an' weel may the stars luik doon, blinkin' an' luikin' again—ilk ane duin' its bonny pairt to mak a man a richt hertit guid willed sodger!"
"And, pray, what may be your rank in this wonderful army?" asked Lady Florimel, with the air and tone of one humouring a lunatic.
"I'm naething but a raw recruit, my leddy; but gien I hed my chice, I wad be piper to my reg'ment."
"How do you mean?"
"I wad mak sangs. Dinna lauch at me, my leddy, for they're the best kin' o'