CHAPTER XLV.
THE RIDE HOME.
Florimel was offended with Malcolm: he had put her confidence in him to shame, speaking of things to which he ought not once to have even alluded. But Clementina was not only older than Florimel, but in her loving endeavours for her kind, had heard many a pitiful story, and was now saddened by the tale, not shocked at the teller. Indeed, Malcolm’s mode of acquainting her with the grounds of the feeling she had challenged pleased both her heart and her sense of what was becoming; while, as a partisan of women, finding a man also of their part, she was ready to offer him the gratitude of all womankind—in her one typical self.
“What a rough diamond is here!” she thought.
“Rough!” echoed her heart: “how is he rough? What fault could the most fastidious find with his manners? True, he speaks as a servant —and where would be his manners if he did not? But neither in tone, expression, nor way of thinking, is he in the smallest degree servile. He is like a great pearl, clean out of the sea—bred, it is true, in the midst of strange surroundings, but pure as the moonlight; and if a man, so environed, yet has grown so grand, what might he not become with such privileges as——!”
Good Clementina—what did she mean? Did she imagine that such mere gifts as she might give him, could do more for him than the great sea, with the torment and conquest of its winds and tempests? more than his own ministrations of love, and victories over passion and pride? What the final touches of the shark-skin are to the marble that stands lord of the flaming bow, that only can wealth and position be to the man who has yielded neither to the judgments of the world nor the drawing of his own inclinations, and so has submitted himself to the chisel and mallet of his maker. Society is the barber who trims a man’s hair, often very badly too—and pretends he made it grow. If her owner should take her, body and soul, and make of her being a gift to his—ah, then, indeed! But Clementina was not yet capable of perceiving that, while what she had in her thought to offer might hurt him, it could do him little good. Her feeling concerning him, however, was all the time far indeed from folly. Not for a moment did she imagine him in love with her. Possibly she admired him too much to attribute to him such an intolerable and insolent presumption as that would have appeared to her own inferior self. Still, she was far indeed from certain, were she, as befits the woman so immeasurably beyond even the aspiration of the man, to make him offer implicit of hand and havings, that he would reach out his to take them. And certainly that she was not going to do—in which determination, whether she knew it or not, there was as much modesty and gracious doubt of her own worth as there was pride and maidenly recoil. In one resolve she was confident, that her behaviour towards him should be such as to keep him just where he was, affording him no smallest excuse for taking one step nearer: and they would soon be in London, where she would see nothing, or next to nothing more of him. But should she ever cease to thank God, that was, if ever she came to find him, that in this groom he had shown her what he could do in the way of making a man! Heartily she wished she knew a nobleman or two like him. In the meantime she meant to enjoy—with carefulness —the ride to London, after which things should be as before.
The morning arrived; they finished breakfast; the horses came round and stood at the door—all but Kelpie. The ladies mounted. Ah, what a morning to leave the country and go back to London! The sun shone clear on the dark pine-woods; the birds were radiant in song; all under the trees the ferns were unrolling each its mystery of ever generating life; the soul of the summer was there whose mere idea sends the heart into the eyes, while itself flits mocking from the cage of words. A gracious mystery it was—in the air, in the sun, in the earth, in their own hearts. The lights of heaven mingled and played with the shadows of the earth, which looked like the souls of the trees that had been out wandering all night, and had been overtaken by the sun ere they could re-enter their dark cells. Every motion of the horses under them was like a throb of the heart of the earth, every bound like a sigh of her bliss. Florimel shouted almost like a boy with ecstasy, and Clementina’s moonlight went very near changing into sunlight as she gazed, and breathed, and knew that she was alive.
They started without Malcolm, for he must always put his mistress up, and then go back to the stable for Kelpie. In a moment they were in the wood, crossing its shadows. It was like swimming their horses through a sea of shadows. Then came a little stream and the horses splashed it about like children from very gamesomeness. Half a mile more and there was a saw-mill, with a mossy wheel, a pond behind, dappled with sun and shade, a dark rush of water along a brown trough, and the air full of the sweet smell of sawn wood. Clementina had not once looked behind, and did not know whether Malcolm had yet joined them or not. All at once the wild vitality of Kelpie filled the space beside her, and the voice of Malcolm was in her ears. She turned her head. He was looking very solemn.
“Will you let me tell you, my lady, what this always makes me think of?” he said.
“What in particular do you mean?” returned Clementina coldly.
“This smell of new-sawn wood that fills the air, my lady.”