Heaven and earth seemed to close with a snap around his brain. The next moment, they had receded an immeasurable distance, and in limitless wastes of exhausted being he stood alone. What time had passed when he came to himself he had not an idea; it might have been hours for anything his consciousness was able to tell him. But, although he recalled nothing of what she had been urging, he grew aware that Lady Florimel's voice, which was now in his ears, had been sounding in them all the time. He was standing before her like a marble statue with a dumb thrill in its helpless heart of stone. He must end this! Parting was bad enough, but an endless parting was unendurable! To know that measureless impassable leagues lay between them, and yet to be for ever in the shroud of a cold leave taking! To look in her eyes, and know that she was not there! A parting that never broke the bodily presence—that was the form of agony which the infinite moment assumed. As to the possibility she would bribe him with—it was not even the promise of a glimpse of Abraham's bosom from the heart of hell. With such an effort as breaks the bonds of a nightmare dream, he turned from her, and, heedless of her recall, went slowly, steadily, out of the house.
While she was talking, his eyes had been resting with glassy gaze upon the far off waters: the moment he stepped into the open air, and felt the wind on his face, he knew that their turmoil was the travailing of sympathy, and that the ocean had been drawing him all the time. He walked straight to his little boat, lying dead on the sands of the harbour, launched it alive on the smooth water within the piers, rove his halliard, stepped his mast, hoisted a few inches of sail, pulled beyond the sheltering sea walls, and was tossing amidst the torn waters whose jagged edges were twisted in the loose flying threads of the northern gale. A moment more, and he was sitting on the windward gunwale of his spoon of a boat, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other, as she danced like a cork over the broken tops of the waves. For help in his sore need, instinct had led him to danger.
Half way to the point of Scaurnose, he came round on the other tack, and stood for the Death Head.
Glancing from the wallowing floor beneath him, and the one wing that bore him skimming over its million deaths, away to the House of Lossie, where it stood steady in its woods, he distinguished the very window whence, hardly an hour ago, from the centre of the calm companionship of books, he had gazed out upon the wind swept waste as upon a dream.
"How strange," he thought, "to find myself now in the midst of what I then but saw! This reeling ocean was but a picture to me then—a picture framed in the window; it is now alive and I toss like a toy on its wild commotion. Then I but saw from afar the flashing of the white out of the blue water, and the blue sky overhead, which no winds can rend into pallid pains; now I have to keep eye and hand together in one consent to shun death; I meet wind and wave on their own terms, and humour the one into an evasion of the other. The wind that then revealed itself only in white blots and streaks now lashes my hair into my eyes, and only the lift of my bows is betwixt me and the throat that swallows the whales and the krakens.
"Will it be so with death? It looks strange and far off now, but it draws nigh noiselessly, and one day I meet it face to face in the grapple: shall I rejoice in that wrestle as I rejoice in this? Will not my heart grow sick within me? Shall I not be faint and fearful? And yet I could almost wish it were at hand!
"I wonder how death and this wan water here look to God! To him is it like a dream—a picture? Water cannot wet him; death cannot touch him. Yet Jesus could have let the water wet him; and he granted power to death when he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. God knows how things look to us both far off and near; he also can see them so when he pleases. What they look to him is what they are: we cannot see them so, but we see them as he meant us to see them, therefore truly, according to the measure of the created. Made in the image of God, we see things in the image of his sight."
Thoughts like these, only in yet cruder forms, swept through the mind of Malcolm as he tossed on that autumn sea. But what we call crude forms are often in reality germinal forms; and one or other of these flowered at once into the practical conclusion that God must know all his trouble, and would work for him a worthy peace. Ere he turned again towards the harbour, he had reascended the cloud haunted Pisgah whence the words of Lady Florimel had hurled him.
CHAPTER L: LIZZY FINDLAY
Leaving his boat again on the dry sand that sloped steep into the harbour, Malcolm took his way homeward along the shore. Presently he spied, at some little distance in front of him, a woman sitting on the sand, with her head bowed upon her knees. She had no shawl, though the wind was cold and strong, blowing her hair about wildly. Her attitude and whole appearance were the very picture of misery. He drew near and recognized her.
"What on earth's gane wrang wi' ye, Lizzy?" he asked.
"Ow naething," she murmured, without lifting her head. The brief reply was broken by a sob.
"That canna be," persisted Malcolm, trouble of whose own had never yet rendered him indifferent to that of another. "Is 't onything 'at a body cun stan' by ye in?"
Another sob was the only answer.
" in a peck o' troubles mysel'," said Malcolm. "I wad fain help a body gien I cud."
"Naebody can help me," returned the girl, with an agonized burst, as if the words were driven from her by a convulsion of her inner world, and therewith she gave way, weeping and sobbing aloud. "I doobt I'll hae to droon mysel'," she added with a wail, as he stood in compassionate silence, until the gust should blow over; and as she said it she lifted a face tear stained, and all white, save where five fingers had branded their shapes in red. Her eyes scarcely encountered his; again she buried her face in her hands, and rocked herself to and fro, moaning in fresh agony.
"Yer mither's been sair upo' ye, I doobt!" he said. "But it'll sune blaw ower. She cuils as fest 's she heats."
As he spoke he set himself down on the sand beside her. But Lizzy started to her feet, crying,
"Dinna come near me, Ma'colm. no fit for honest man to come nigh me. Stan' awa'; I hae the plague."
She laughed, but it was a pitiful laugh, and she looked wildly about, as if for some place to run to.
"I wad na be sorry to tak it mysel', Lizzy. At ony rate ower auld a freen' to be driven frae ye that gait," said Malcolm, who could not bear the thought of leaving her on the border of the solitary sea, with the waves barking at her all the cold winterly gloamin'. Who could tell what she might do after the dark came down? He rose and would have taken her hand to draw it from her face; but she turned her back quickly, saying in a hard forced voice:
"A man canna help a wuman—'cep it be till her grave." Then turning suddenly, she laid her hands on his shoulders, and cried: "For the love o' God, Ma'colm, lea' me this moment. Gien I cud tell ony man what ailed me, I wad tell you; but I canna, I canna! Rin laddie; rin' an' leap me."
It was impossible to resist her anguished entreaty and agonized look. Sore at heart and puzzled in brain, Malcolm yielding turned from her, and with eyes on the ground, thoughtfully pursued his slow walk towards the Seaton.
At the corner of the first house in the village stood three women, whom he saluted as he passed. The tone of their reply struck him a little, but, not having observed how they watched him as he approached, he presently forgot it. The moment his back was turned to them, they turned to each other and interchanged looks.
"Fine feathers mak fine birds," said one of them.
"Ay, but he luiks booed doon," said another.
"An' weel he may! What 'll his leddy mither say to sic a ploy? she'll no sawvour bein' made a granny o' efter sic a fashion 's yon," said the third.