"It's a richt bonny nicht, laird," said Malcolm.
The poor fellow looked hurriedly behind him, then stared again, then made gestures backward, and next pointed at Malcolm with rapid pokes of his forefinger. Bewilderment had brought on the impediment in his speech, and all Malcolm could distinguish in the babbling efforts at utterance which followed, were the words,—"Twa o' them! Twa o' them! Twa o' them!" often and hurriedly repeated.
"It's a fine, saft sleekit win,' laird," said Malcolm, as if they were meeting for the first time that night. "I think it maun come frae the blue there, ayont the stars. There's a heap o' wonnerfu' things there, they tell me; an' whiles a strokin win' an' whiles a rosy smell, an' whiles a bricht licht, an' whiles, they say, an auld yearnin' sang, 'ill brak oot, an' wanner awa doon, an' gang flittin' an' fleein' amang the sair herts o' the men an' women fowk 'at canna get things putten richt."
"I think there are two fools of them!" said the marquis, referring to the words of the laird.
He was seated with Lady Florimel on the town side of the rock, hidden from them by one sharp corner. They had seen the mad laird coming, and had recognised Malcolm's voice.
"I dinna ken whaur I come frae," burst from the laird, the word whaur drawn out and emphasized almost to a howl; and as he spoke he moved on again, but gently now, towards the rocks of the Scaurnose. Anxious to get him thoroughly soothed before they parted, Malcolm accompanied him. They walked a little way side by side in silence, the laird every now and then heaving his head like a fretted horse towards the sky, as if he sought to shake the heavy burden from his back, straighten out his poor twisted spine, and stand erect like his companion:
"Ay!" Malcolm began again, as if he had in the meantime been thinking over the question, and was now assured upon it, "—the win' maun come frae yont the stars; for dinna ye min', laird? Ye was at the kirk last Sunday—wasna ye?"
The laird nodded an affirmative, and Malcolm went on.
"An' didna ye hear the minister read frae the buik 'at hoo ilka guid an' ilka perfit gift was frae abune, an' cam frae the Father o' lichts?"
"Father o' lichts!" repeated the laird, and looked up at the stars. "I dinna ken whaur I cam frae. I hae nae father. I hae only a … I hae only a wuman."
The moment he had said the word, he began to move his head from side to side like a scared animal seeking where to conceal itself.
"The Father o' lichts is your father an' mine—The Father o' a' o' 's," said Malcolm.
"O' a' guid fowk, I daursay," said the laird, with a deep and quivering sigh.
"Mr Graham says—o' a'body," returned Malcolm, "guid an' ill; —o' the guid to haud them guid an' mak them better—o' the ill to mak them guid."
"Eh! gien that war true!" said the laird.
They walked on in silence for a minute. All at once the laird threw up his hands, and fell flat on his face on the sand, his poor hump rising skywards above his head. Malcolm thought he had been seized with one of the fits to which he was subject, and knelt down beside him, to see if he could do anything for him. Then he found he was praying: he heard him—he could but just hear him—murmuring over and over, all but inaudibly, "Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts!" It seemed as if no other word dared mingle itself with that cry. Maniac or not—the mood of the man was supremely sane, and altogether too sacred to disturb. Malcolm retreated a little way, sat down in the sand and watched beside him. It was a solemn time—the full tide lapping up on the long yellow sand from the wide sea darkening out to the dim horizon: the gentle wind blowing through the molten darkness; overhead, the great vault without arch or keystone, of dim liquid blue, and sown with worlds so far removed they could only shine; and, on the shore, the centre of all the cosmic order, a misshapen heap of man, a tumulus in which lay buried a live and lovely soul! The one pillar of its chapter house had given way, and the downrushing ruin had so crushed and distorted it, that thenceforth until some resurrection should arrive, disorder and misshape must appear to it the law of the universe, and loveliness but the passing dream of a brain glad to deceive its own misery, and so to fancy it had received from above what it had itself generated of its own poverty from below. To the mind's eye of Malcolm, the little hump on the sand was heaved to the stars, higher than ever Roman tomb or Egyptian pyramid, in silent appeal to the sweet heavens, a dumb prayer for pity, a visible groan for the resurrection of the body. For a few minutes he sat as still as the prostrate laird.
But bethinking himself that his grandfather would not go to bed until he went back, also that the laird was in no danger, as the tide was now receding, he resolved to go and get the old man to bed, and then return. For somehow he felt in his heart that he ought not to leave him alone. He could not enter into his strife to aid him, or come near him in any closer way than watching by his side until his morning dawned, or at least the waters of his flood assuaged, yet what he could he must: he would wake with him in his conflict.
He rose and ran for the bored craig, through which lay the straight line to his abandoned boots.
As he approached the rock, he heard the voices of Lord Lossie and Lady Florimel, who, although the one had not yet verified her being, the other had almost ruined his, were nevertheless enjoying the same thing, the sweetness of the night, together. Not hearing Malcolm's approach, they went on talking, and as he was passing swiftly through the bore, he heard these words from the marquis,—"The world's an ill baked cake, Flory, and all that a woman, at least, can do, is to cut as large a piece of it as possible, for immediate use."
The remark being a general one, Malcolm cannot be much blamed if he stood with one foot lifted to hear Florimel's reply.
"If it 's an ill baked one, papa," she returned, "I think it would be better to cut as small a piece of it as will serve for immediate use."
Malcolm was delighted with her answer, never thinking whether it came from her head or her heart, for the two were at one in himself.
As soon as he appeared on the other side of the rock, the marquis challenged him: "Who goes there?" he said.
"Malcolm MacPhail, my lord."
"You rascal!" said his lordship, good humouredly; "you've been listening!"
"No muckle, my lord. I heard but a word apiece. An' I maun say my leddy had the best o' the loagic."
"My lady generally has, I suspect," laughed the marquis. "How long have you been in the rock there?"
"No ae meenute, my lord. I flang aff my butes to rin efter a freen', an' that's hoo ye didna hear me come up. gaein' efter them noo, to gang hame i' them. Guid nicht, my lord. Guid nicht, my leddy."
He turned and pursued his way; but Florimel's face, glimmering through the night, went with him as he ran.
He told his grandfather how he had left the mad laird lying on his face, on the sands between the bored craig and the rocks of the promontory, and said he would like to go back to him.
"He'll be hafing a fit, poor man," said Duncan. "Yes, my son, you must co to him and to your pest for him. After such an honour as we 'fe had this day, we mustn't pe forgetting our poor neighpours. Will you pe taking to him a trop of uisgebeatha?"
"He taks naething o' that kin'," said Malcolm.
He could not tell him that the madman, as men called him, lay wrestling in prayer with the Father of lights. The old highlander was not irreverent, but the thing would have been unintelligible to him. He could readily have believed that the supposed lunatic might be favoured beyond ordinary mortals; that at that very moment, lost in his fit, he might be rapt in a vision of the future—a wave of time, far off as yet from the souls of other men, even now rolling over his; but that a soul should seek after vital content by contact with its maker, was an idea belonging to a region which, in the highlander's being, lay as yet an unwatered desert, an undiscovered land, whence even no faintest odour had been wafted across the still air of surprised contemplation.