Chapter 66

SEA

The evening came; and the company at Lossie House was still seated at table, Clementina heartily weary of the vapid talk that had been going on all through the dinner, when she was informed that a fisherman of the name of Mair was at the door, accompanied by his wife, saying they had an appointment with her. She had already acquainted her hostess, when first they sat down, with her arrangements for going a-fishing that night, and much foolish talk and would be wit had followed; now, when she rose and excused herself, they all wished her a pleasant evening, in a tone indicating the conviction that she little knew what she was about, and would soon be longing heartily enough to be back with them in the drawing room, whose lighted windows she would see from the boat. But Clementina hoped otherwise, hurriedly changed her dress, hastened to join Malcolm's messengers, and almost in a moment had made the two childlike people at home with her, by the simplicity and truth of her manner, and the directness of her utterance. They had not talked with her five minutes before they said in their hearts that here was the wife for the marquis if he could get her.

"She's jist like ane o' oorsel's," whispered Annie to her husband on the first opportunity, "only a hantle better an bonnier."

They took the nearest way to the harbour--through the town, and Lady Clementina and Blue Peter kept up a constant talk as they went. All in the streets and at the windows stared to see the grand lady from the House walking between a Scaurnose fisherman and his wife, and chatting away with them as if they were all fishers together.

"What's the wordle comin' till!" cried Mrs Mellis, the draper's wife, as she saw them pass.

"I'm glaid to see the yoong wuman--an' a bonny lass she is!--in sic guid company," said Miss Horn, looking down from the opposite side of the way. "I'm thinkin' the han' o' the markis 'ill be i' this, no'!"

All was ready to receive her, but in the present bad state of the harbour, and the tide having now ebbed a little way, the boat could not get close either to quay or shore. Six of the crew were on board, seated on the thwarts with their oars shipped, for Peter had insisted on a certain approximation to man of war manners and discipline for the evening, or at least until they got to the fishing ground. The shore itself formed one side of the harbour, and sloped down into it, and on the sand stood Malcolm with a young woman, whom Clementina recognised at once as the girl she had seen at the Findlays'.

"My lady," he said, approaching, "would you do me the favour to let Lizzy go with you. She would like to attend your ladyship, because, being a fisherman's daughter, she is used to the sea, and Mrs Mair is not so much at home upon it, being a farmer's daughter from inland."

Receiving Clementina's thankful assent, he turned to Lizzy and said --

"Min' ye tell my lady what rizon ye ken whaurfor my mistress at the Hoose sudna be merried upo' Lord Liftore--him 'at was Lord Meikleham. Ye may speyk to my lady there as ye wad to mysel'-- an' better, haein' the hert o' a wuman."

Lizzy blushed a deep red, and dared but the glimmer of a glance at Clementina, but there was only shame, no annoyance in her face.

"Ye winna repent it, Lizzy," concluded Malcolm, and turned away.

He cherished a faint hope that, if she heard or guessed Lizzy's story, Clementina might yet find some way of bringing her influence to bear on his sister even at the last hour of her chance--from which, for her sake, he shrunk the more the nearer it drew. Clementina held out her hand to Lizzy, and again accepted her offered service with kindly thanks.

Now Blue Peter, having been ship's carpenter in his day, had constructed a little poop in the stern of his craft; thereon Malcolm had laid cushions and pillows and furs and blankets from the Psyche,--a grafting of Cleopatra's galley upon the rude fishing boat--and there Clementina was to repose in state. Malcolm gave a sign: Peter took his wife in his arms, and walking through the few yards of water between, lifted her into the boat, which lay with its stern to the shore. Malcolm and Clementina turned to each other: he was about to ask leave to do her the same service, but she spoke before him.

"Put Lizzy on board first," she said.

He obeyed, and when, returning, he again approached her--"Are you able, Malcolm?" she asked. "I am very heavy."

He smiled for all reply, took her in his arms like a child, and had placed her on the cushions before she had time to realize the mode of her transference. Then taking a stride deeper into the water, he scrambled on board. The same instant the men gave way. They pulled carefully through the narrow jaws of the little harbour, and away with quivering oar and falling tide, went the boat, gliding out into the measureless north, where the horizon was now dotted with the sails that had preceded it.

No sooner were they afloat than a kind of enchantment enwrapped and possessed the soul of Clementina. Everything seemed all at once changed utterly. The very ends of the harbour piers might have stood in the Divina Commedia instead of the Moray Frith. Oh that wonderful look everything wears when beheld from the other side! Wonderful surely will this world appear--strangely more, when, become children again by being gathered to our fathers--joyous day! we turn and gaze back upon it from the other side! I imagine that, to him who has overcome it, the world, in very virtue of his victory, will show itself the lovely and pure thing it was created-- for he will see through the cloudy envelope of his battle to the living kernel below. The cliffs, the rocks, the sands, the dune, the town, the very clouds that hung over the hill above Lossie House, were in strange fashion transfigured. To think of people sitting behind those windows while the splendour and freedom of space with all its divine shows invited them--lay bare and empty to them! Out and still out they rowed and drifted, till the coast began to open up beyond the headlands on either side.

There a light breeze was waiting them. Up then went three short masts, and three dark brown sails shone red in the sun, and Malcolm came aft, over the great heap of brown nets, crept with apology across the poop, and got down into a little well behind, there to sit and steer the boat; for now, obedient to the wind in its sails, it went frolicking over the sea.

The bonnie Annie bore a picked crew; for Peter's boat was to him a sort of church, in which he would not with his will carry any Jonah fleeing from the will of the lord of the sea. And that boat's crew did not look the less merrily out of their blue eyes, or carry themselves the less manfully in danger, that they believed a lord of the earth and the sea and the fountains of water cared for his children and would have them honest and fearless.

And now came a scattering of rubies and topazes over the slow waves, as the sun reached the edge of the horizon, and shone with a glory of blinding red along the heaving level of green, dashed with the foam of their flight. Could such a descent as this be intended for a type of death? Clementina asked. Was it not rather as if, from a corner of the tomb behind, she saw the back parts of a resurrection and ascension: warmth, out shining, splendour; departure from the door of the tomb; exultant memory; tarnishing gold, red fading to russet; fainting of spirit, loneliness; deepening blue and green; pallor, grayness, coldness; out creeping stars; further reaching memory; the dawn of infinite hope and foresight; the assurance that under passion itself lay a better and holier mystery? Here was God's naughty child, the world, laid asleep and dreaming--if not merrily, yet contentedly; and there was the sky with all the day gathered and hidden up in its blue, ready to break forth again in laughter on the morrow, bending over its skyey cradle like a mother! and there was the aurora, the secret of life, creeping away round to the north to be ready! Then first, when the slow twilight had fairly settled into night, did Clementina begin to know the deepest marvel of this facet of the rose diamond life! God's night and sky and sea were her's now, as they had been Malcolm's from childhood! And when the nets had been paid out, and sank straight into the deep, stretched betwixt leads below and floats and buoys above, extending a screen of meshes against the rush of the watery herd; when the sails were down, and the whole vault of stars laid bare to her eyes as she lay; when the boat was still, fast to the nets, anchored as it were by hanging acres of curtain, and all was silent as a church, waiting, and she might dream or sleep or pray as she would, with nothing about her but peace and love and the deep sea, and over her but still peace and love and the deeper sky, then the soul of Clementina rose and worshipped the soul of the universe; her spirit clave to the Life of her life, the Thought of her thought, the Heart of her heart; her will bowed itself to the creator of will, worshipping the supreme, original, only Freedom--the Father of her love, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of the hearts of the universe, the Thinker of all thoughts, the Beginner of all beginnings, the All in all. It was her first experience of speechless adoration.

Most of the men were asleep in the bows of the boat; all were lying down but one. That one was Malcolm. He had come aft, and seated himself under the platform leaning against it.

The boat rose and sank a little, just enough to rock the sleeping children a little deeper into their sleep; Malcolm thought all slept. He did not see how Clementina's eyes shone back to the heavens--no star in them to be named beside those eyes. She knew that Malcolm was near her, but she would not speak; she would not break the peace of the presence. A minute or two passed. Then softly woke a murmur of sound, that strengthened and grew, and swelled at last into a song. She feared to stir lest she should interrupt its flow. And thus it flowed:

The stars are steady abune;
I' the water they flichter an' flee;
But steady aye luikin' doon,
They ken themsel's i' the sea.
A' licht, an' clear, an' free,
God, thou shinest abune;
Yet luik, an' see thysel' in me,
God, whan thou luikest doon.
A silence followed, but a silence that seemed about to be broken.
And again Malcolm sang:
There was an auld fisher--he sat by the wa',
An' luikit oot ower the sea;
The bairnies war playin', he smilit on them a',
But the tear stude in his e'e.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'!
An' it's oh to win awa'
Whaur the bairns come home, an' the wives they bide,
An' God is the Father o' a'!
Jocky an' Jeamy an' Tammy oot there,
A' i' the boatie gaed doon;
An' I'm ower auld to fish ony mair,
An' I hinna the chance to droon.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'! &c.
An' Jeanie she grat to ease her hert,
An' she easit hersel' awa'
But I'm ower auld for the tears to stert,
An' sae the sighs maun blaw.
An' it's oh to win awa', awa'! &c.
Lord, steer me hame whaur my Lord has steerit,
For I'm tired o' life's rockin' sea
An' dinna be lang, for I'm nearhan' fearit
'At I'm 'maist ower auld to dee.
An' it's oh to win awa', awe'! &c.

Again the stars and the sky were all, and there was no sound but the slight murmurous lipping of the low swell against the edges of the planks. Then Clementina said:

"Did you make that song, Malcolm?"

"Whilk o' them, my leddy?--But it's a' ane--they're baith mine, sic as they are."

"Thank you," she returned.

"What for, my leddy?"

"For speaking Scotch to me."

"I beg your pardon, my lady. I forgot your ladyship was English."

"Please forget it," she said. "But I thank you for your songs too. It was the second I wanted to know about; the first I was certain was your own. I did not know you could enter like that into the feelings of an old man."

"Why not, my lady? I never can see living thing without asking it how it feels. Often and often, out here at such a time as this, have I tried to fancy myself a herring caught by the gills in the net down below, instead of the fisherman in the boat above going to haul him out."

"And did you succeed?"

"Well, I fancy I came to understand as much of him as he does himself. It's a merry enough life down there. The flukes--plaice, you call them, my lady,--bother me, I confess. I never contemplate one without feeling as if I had been sat upon when I was a baby. But for an old man!--Why, that's what I shall be myself one day most likely, and it would be a shame not to know pretty nearly how he felt--near enough at least to make a song about him."

"And shan't you mind being an old man, then, Malcolm?"

"Not in the least, my lady. I shall mind nothing so long as I can trust in the maker of me. If my faith should give way--why then there would be nothing worth minding either! I don't know but I should kill myself."

"Malcolm!"

"Which is worse, my lady--to distrust God, or to think life worth having without him?"

"But one may hope in the midst of doubt--at least that is what Mr Graham--and you--have taught me to do."

"Yes, surely, my lady. I won't let anyone beat me at that, if I can help it. And I think that so long as I kept my reason, I should be able to cry out, as that grandest and most human of all the prophets did--'Though he slay me yet will I trust in him.' But would you not like to sleep, my lady?"

"No, Malcolm. I would much rather hear you talk,--Could you not tell me a story now? Lady Lossie mentioned one you once told her about an old castle somewhere not far from here."

"Eh, my leddy!" broke in Annie Mair, who had waked up while they were speaking, "I wuss ye wad gar him tell ye that story, for my man he's h'ard 'im tell't, an' he says it's unco gruesome: I wad fain hear 't.--Wauk up, Lizzy," she went on, in her eagerness waiting for no answer; "Ma'colm's gauin' to tell 's the tale o' the auld castel o' Colonsay.--It's oot by yon'er, my leddy-- 'no that far frae the Deid Heid.--Wauk up, Lizzy."

"I'm no sleepin', Annie," said Lizzy, "--though like Ma'colm's auld man," she added with a sigh, "I wad whiles fain be."

Now there were reasons why Malcolm should not be unwilling to tell the strange wild story requested of him, and he commenced it at once, but modified the Scotch of it considerably for the sake of the unaccustomed ears. When it was ended Clementina said nothing; Annie Mair said "Hech, sirs!" and Lizzy with a great sigh, remarked,

"The deil maun be in a'thing whaur God hasna a han', I'm thinkin'."

"Ye may tak yer aith upo' that," rejoined Malcolm.

It was a custom in Peter's boat never to draw the nets without a prayer, uttered now by one and now by another of the crew. Upon this occasion, whether it was in deference to Malcolm, who, as he well understood, did not like long prayers, or that the presence of Clementina exercised some restraint upon his spirit, out of the bows of the boat came now the solemn voice of its master, bearing only this one sentence:

"Oh Thoo, wha didst tell thy dissiples to cast the net upo' the side whaur swam the fish, gien it be thy wull 'at we catch the nicht, lat 's catch; gien it binna thy wull, lat 's no catch.--Haul awa', my laads."

Up sprang the men, and went each to his place, and straight a torrent of gleaming fish was pouring in over the gunwale of the boat. Such a take it was ere the last of the nets was drawn, as the oldest of them had seldom seen. Thousands of fish there were that had never got into the meshes at all.

"I cannot understand it," said Clementina. "There are multitudes more fish than there are meshes in the nets to catch them: if they are not caught, why do they not swim away?"

"Because they are drowned, my lady," answered Malcolm.

"What do you mean by that? How can you drown a fish?"

"You may call it suffocated if you like, my lady; it is all the same. You have read of panic stricken people, when a church or a theatre is on fire, rushing to the door all in a heap, and crowding each other to death? It is something like that with the fish. They are swimming along in a great shoal, yards thick; and when the first can get no farther, that does not at once stop the rest, any more than it would in a crowd of people; those that are behind come pressing up into every corner, where there is room, till they are one dense mass. Then they push and push to get forward, and can't get through, and the rest come still crowding on behind and above and below, till a multitude of them are jammed so tight against each other that they can't open their gills; and even if they could, there would not be air enough for them. You've seen the goldfish in the swan basin, my lady, how they open and shut their gills constantly: that's their way of getting air out of the water by some wonderful contrivance nobody understands, for they need breath just as much as we do: and to close their gills is to them the same as closing a man's mouth and nose. That's how the most of those herrings are taken."

All were now ready to seek the harbour. A light westerly wind was still blowing, with the aid of which, heavy laden, they crept slowly to the land. As she lay snug and warm, with the cool breath of the sea on her face, a half sleep came over Clementina, and she half dreamed that she was voyaging in a ship of the air, through infinite regions of space, with a destination too glorious to be known. The herring boat was a living splendour of strength and speed, its sails were as the wings of a will, in place of the instruments of a force, and softly as mightily it bore them through the charmed realms of dreamland towards the ideal of the soul. And yet the herring boat but crawled over the still waters with its load of fish, as the harvest waggon creeps over the field with its piled up sheaves; and she who imagined its wondrous speed was the only one who did not desire it should move faster.

No word passed between her and Malcolm all their homeward way. Each was brooding over the night and its joy that enclosed them together, and hoping for that which was yet to be shaken from the lap of the coming time.

Also Clementina had in her mind a scheme for attempting what Malcolm had requested of her; the next day must see it carried into effect; and ever and anon, like a cold blast of doubt invading the bliss of confidence, into the heart of that sea borne peace darted the thought, that, if she failed, she must leave at once for England, for she would not again meet Liftore.