"There's something on your mind," Florimel went on, partly from willingness to serve Mrs Stewart, partly enticed by the romance of being Malcolm's comforter, or perhaps confessor.
"Ay is there, my leddy."
"What is it? Tell me. You can trust me!"
"I could trust ye, but I canna tell ye. I daurna—I maunna."
"I see you will not trust me," said Florimel, with a half pretended, half real offence.
"I wad lay doon my life—what there is o' 't—for ye, my leddy; but the verra natur o' my trouble winna be tauld. I maun beir 't my lane."
It flashed across Lady Florimel's brain, that the cause of his misery, the thing he dared not confess, was love of herself. Now, Malcolm, standing before her in his present dress, and interpreted by the knowledge she believed she had of his history, was a very different person indeed from the former Malcolm in the guise of fisherman or sailor, and she felt as well as saw the difference: if she was the cause of his misery, why should she not comfort him a little? why should she not be kind to him? Of course anything more was out of the question; but a little confession and consolation would hurt neither of them. Besides, Mrs Stewart had begged her influence, and this would open a new channel for its exercise. Indeed, if he was unhappy through her, she ought to do what she might for him. A gentle word or two would cost her nothing, and might help to heal a broken heart! She was hardly aware, however, how little she wanted it healed—all at once.
For the potency of a thought it is perhaps even better that it should not be logically displayed to the intellect; anyhow the germ of all this, undeveloped into the definite forms I have given, sufficed to the determining of Florimel's behaviour. I do not mean that she had more than the natural tendency of womankind to enjoy the emotions of which she was the object; but besides the one in the fable, there are many women with a tendency to arousing; and the idea of deriving pleasure from the sufferings of a handsome youth was not quite so repulsive to her as it ought to have been. At the same time, as there cannot be many cats capable of understanding the agonies of the mice within reach of their waving whiskers, probably many cat women are not quite so cruel as they seem.
"Can't you trust me, Malcolm?" she said, looking in his eyes very sweetly, and bending a little towards him; "Can't you trust me?"
At the words and the look it seemed as if his frame melted to ether. He dropped on his knees, and, his heart half stifled in the confluence of the tides of love and misery, sighed out between the pulses in his throat:
"There's naething I could na tell ye 'at ever I thoucht or did i' my life, my leddy; but it 's ither fowk, my leddy! It's like to burn a hole i' my hert, an' yet I daurna open my mou'."
There was a half angelic, half dog-like entreaty in his up looking hazel eyes that seemed to draw hers down into his: she must put a stop to that.
"Get up, Malcolm," she said kindly, "what would my father or Mrs Courthope think?"
"I dinna ken, an' I maist dinna care; atween ae thing an' anither, near han' distrackit," answered Malcolm, rising slowly, but not taking his eyes from her face. "An' there's my daddy!" he went on, "maist won ower to the enemy—an' I daurna tell even him what for I canna bide it!—Ye haena been sayin' onything till him—hiv ye, my leddy?"
"I don't quite understand you," returned Florimel, rather guiltily, for she had spoken on the subject to Duncan. "Saying anything to your grandfather? About what?"
"Aboot—aboot—Her, ye ken, my leddy."
"What her?" asked Florimel.
"Her 'at—The leddy o' Gersefell."
"And why? What of her? Why, Malcolm! what can have possessed you? You seem actually to dislike her!"
"I canna bide her," said Malcolm, with the calm earnestness of one who is merely stating an incontrovertible fact, and for a moment his eyes, at once troubled and solemn, kept looking wistfully in hers, as if searching for a comfort too good to be found, then slowly sank and sought the floor at her feet.
"And why?"
"I canna tell ye."
She supposed it an unreasoned antipathy.
"But that is very wrong," she said, almost as if rebuking a child. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What!—dislike your own mother?"
"Dinna say the word, my leddy," cried Malcolm in a tone of agony, "or ye'll gar me skirl an' rin like the mad laird. He's no a hair madder nor I wad be wi' sic a mither."
He would have passed her to leave the room.
But Lady Florimel could not bear defeat. In any contest she must win or be shamed in her own eyes, and was she to gain absolutely nothing in such a passage with a fisher lad? Was the billow of her persuasion to fall back from such a rock, self beaten into poorest foam? She would, she must subdue him! Perhaps she did not know how much the sides of her intent were pricked by the nettling discovery that she was not the cause of his unhappiness.
"You 're not going to leave me so!" she exclaimed, in a tone of injury.
"I 'll gang or bide as ye wull, my leddy," answered Malcolm resignedly.
"Bide then," she returned. "I haven't half done with you yet."
"Ye mauna jist tear my hert oot," he rejoined—with a sad half smile, and another of his dog-like looks.
"That's what you would do to your mother!" said Florimel severely.
"Say nae ill o' my mither!" cried Malcolm, suddenly changing almost to fierceness.
"Why, Malcolm!" said Florimel, bewildered, "what ill was I saying of her?"
"It's naething less than an insult to my mither to ca' yon wuman by her name," he replied with set teeth.
It was to him an offence against the idea of motherhood—against the mother he had so often imagined luminous against the dull blank of memory, to call such a woman his mother.
"She's a very ladylike, handsome woman—handsome enough to be your mother even, Mr Malcolm Stewart."
Florimel could not have dared the words but for the distance between them; but, then, neither would she have said them while the distance was greater! They were lost on Malcolm though, for never in his life having started the question whether he was handsome or not, he merely supposed her making game of him, and drew himself together in silence, with the air of one bracing himself to hear and endure the worst.
"Even if she should not be your mother," his tormentor resumed, "to show such a dislike to any woman is nothing less than cruelty."
"She maun pruv' 't," murmured Malcolm—not the less emphatically that the words were but just audible.
"Of course she will not do that; she has abundance of proof. She gave me a whole hour of proof."
"Lang's no strang," returned Malcolm "there's comfort i' that! Gang on my leddy."
"Poor woman! it was hard enough to lose her son; but to find him again such as you seem likely to turn out, I should think ten times worse."
"Nae doobt! nae doobt!—But there's ae thing waur."
"What is that?"
"To come upon a mither 'at—"
He stopped abruptly; his eyes went wandering about the room, and the muscles of his face worked convulsively.
Florimel saw that she had been driving against a stone wall. She paused a moment, and then resumed.
"Anyhow, if she is your mother," she said, "nothing you can do will alter it."
"She maun pruv' 't," was all Malcolm's dogged reply.
"Just so; and if she can't," said Florimel, "you'll be no worse than you were before—and no better," she added with a sigh.
Malcolm lifted his questioning to her searching eyes.
"Don't you see," she went on, very softly, and lowering her look, from the half conscious shame of half unconscious falseness, "I can't be all my life here at Lossie? We shall have to say goodbye to each other—never to meet again most likely. But if you should turn out to be of good family, you know,—"
Florimel saw neither the paling of his brown cheek nor the great surge of red that followed, but, glancing up to spy the effect of her argument, did see the lightning that broke from the darkened hazel of his eyes, and again cast down her own.
"—then there might be some chance," she went on, "of our meeting somewhere—in London, or perhaps in Edinburgh, and I could ask you to my house—after I was married you know."