"Weel, 'cep it was the oonnaiteral luik o' the thing—no human, an' yet sae dooms like it—I can not account for the grue or the trimmle 'at cam ower me, my lord, I never fan' onything like it i' my life afore. An' even noo 'at I unnerstan' what it is, I kenna what wad gar me luik the boody (bogie) i' the face again."
"Go in at once," said the marquis fiercely.
Malcolm looked him full in the eyes.
"Ye mean what ye say, my lord?"
"Yes, by God!" said the marquis, with an expression I can describe only as of almost savage solemnity.
Malcolm stood silent for one moment.
"Do you think I'll have a man about me that has no more courage than—than—a woman!" said his master, concluding with an effort.
"I was jist turnin' ower an auld question, my lord—whether it be lawfu' to obey a tyrant. But it 's na worth stan'in' oot upo'. I s' gang."
He turned to the arch, placed a hand on each side of it, and leaned forward with outstretched neck, peeped cautiously in, as if it were the den of a wild beast. The moment he saw the figure—seated on a stool—he was seized with the same unaccountable agitation, and drew back shivering.
"Go in," shouted the marquis.
Most Britons would count obedience to such a command slavish; but Malcolm's idea of liberty differed so far from that of most Britons, that he felt, if now he refused to obey the marquis, he might be a slave for ever; for he had already learned to recognize and abhor that slavery which is not the less the root of all other slaveries that it remains occult in proportion to its potency—self slavery: he must and would conquer this whim, antipathy, or whatever the loathing might be: it was a grand chance given him of proving his will supreme—that is himself a free man! He drew himself up, with a full breath, and stepped within the arch. Up rose the horror again, jerked itself towards him with a clank, and held out its hand. Malcolm seized it with such a gripe that its fingers came off in his grasp.
"Will that du, my lord?" he said calmly, turning a face rigid with hidden conflict, and gleaming white, from the framework of the arch, upon his master, whose eyes seemed to devour him.
"Come out," said the marquis, in a voice that seemed to belong to some one else.
"I hae blaudit yer playock, my lord," said Malcolm ruefully, as he stepped from the cave and held out the fingers.
Lord Lossie turned and left the arbour.
Had Malcolm followed his inclination, he would have fled from it, but he mastered himself still, and walked quietly out. The marquis was pacing, with downbent head and hasty strides, up the garden: Malcolm turned the other way.
The shower was over, and the sun was drawing out millions of mimic suns from the drops that hung, for a moment ere they fell, from flower and bush and great tree. But Malcolm saw nothing. Perplexed with himself and more perplexed yet with the behaviour of his master, he went back to his grandfather's cottage, and, as soon as he came in, recounted to him the whole occurrence.
"He had a feeshon," said the bard, with wide eyes. "He comes of a race that sees."
"What cud the veesion hae been, daddy?"
"Tat she knows not, for ta feeshon tid not come to her," said the piper solemnly.
Had the marquis had his vision in London, he would have gone straight to his study, as he called it, not without a sense of the absurdity involved, opened a certain cabinet, and drawn out a certain hidden drawer; being at Lossie, he walked up the glen of the burn to the bare hill, overlooking the House, the royal burgh, the great sea, and his own lands lying far and wide around him. But all the time he saw nothing of these—he saw but the low white forehead of his vision, a mouth of sweetness, and hazel eyes that looked into his very soul.
Malcolm walked back to the House, clomb the narrow duct of an ancient stone stair that went screwing like a great auger through the pile from top to bottom, sought the wide lonely garret, flung himself upon his bed, and from his pillow gazed through the little dormer window on the pale blue skies flecked with cold white clouds, while in his mind's eye he saw the foliage beneath burning in the flames of slow decay, diverse as if each of the seven in the prismatic chord had chosen and seared its own: the first nor'easter that drove the flocks of Neptune on the sands, would sweep its ashes away. Life, he said to himself, was but a poor gray kind of thing after all. The peacock summer had folded its gorgeous train, and the soul within him had lost its purple and green, its gold and blue. He never thought of asking how much of the sadness was owing to bodily conditions with which he was little acquainted, and to compelled idleness in one accustomed to an active life. But if he had, the sorrowful probabilities of life would have seemed just the same. And indeed he might have argued that, to be subject to any evil from a cause inadequate, only involves an absurdity that embitters the pain by its mockery. He had yet to learn what faith can do, in the revelation of the Moodless, for the subjugation of mood to will.
As he lay thus weighed upon rather than pondering, his eye fell on the bunch of keys which he had taken from the door of the wizard's chamber, and he wondered that Mrs Courthope had not seen and taken them—apparently had not missed them. And the chamber doomed to perpetual desertion lying all the time open to any stray foot! Once more at least, he must go and turn the key in the lock.
As he went the desire awoke to look again into the chamber, for that night he had had neither light nor time enough to gain other than the vaguest impression of it.
But for no lifting of the latch would the door open.—How could the woman—witch she must be—have locked it? He proceeded to unlock it. He tried one key, then another. He went over the whole bunch. Mystery upon mystery!—not one of them would turn. Bethinking himself, he began to try them the other way, and soon found one to throw the bolt on. He turned it in the contrary direction, and it threw the bolt off: still the door remained immovable! It must then—awful thought!—be fast on the inside! Was the woman's body lying there behind those check curtains? Would it lie there until it vanished, like that of the wizard,—vanished utterly—bones and all, to a little dust, which one day a housemaid might sweep up in a pan?
On the other hand, if she had got shut in, would she not have made noise enough to be heard?—he had been day and night in the next room! But it was not a spring lock, and how could that have happened? Or would she not have been missed, and inquiry made after her? Only such an inquiry might well have never turned in the direction of Lossie House, and he might never have heard of it, if it had.
Anyhow he must do something; and the first rational movement would clearly be to find out quietly for himself whether the woman was actually missing or not.
Tired as he was he set out at once for the burgh, and the first person he saw was Mrs Catanach standing on her doorstep and shading her eyes with her hand, as she looked away out to the horizon over the roofs of the Seaton. He went no farther.
In the evening he found an opportunity of telling his master how the room was strangely closed; but his lordship pooh poohed, and said something must have gone wrong with the clumsy old lock.
With vague foresight, Malcolm took its key from the bunch, and, watching his opportunity, unseen hung the rest on their proper nail in the housekeeper's room. Then, having made sure that the door of the wizard's chamber was locked, he laid the key away in his own chest.
CHAPTER XLV: MR CAIRNS AND THE MARQUIS
The religious movement amongst the fisher folk was still going on. Their meeting was now held often during the week, and at the same hour on the Sunday as other people met at church. Nor was it any wonder that, having participated in the fervour which pervaded their gatherings in the cave, they should have come to feel the so called divine service in the churches of their respective parishes a dull, cold, lifeless, and therefore unhelpful ordinance, and at length regarding it as composed of beggarly elements, breathing of bondage, to fill the Baillies' Barn three times every Sunday—a reverential and eager congregation.