“I never knew a servant who would not tell a lie,” said Florimel.
“I was brought up a fisherman,” said Malcolm.
“And,” Florimel went on, “I have heard my father say no gentleman ever told a lie.”
“Then Lord Liftore is no gentleman,” said Malcolm. “But I am not going to plead my own cause even to you, my lady. If you can doubt me, do. I have only one thing more to say:—that when I told you and my Lady Clementina about the fisher-girl and the gentleman——”
“How dare you refer to that again? Even you ought to know there are things a lady cannot hear. It is enough you affronted me with that before Lady Clementina—and after foolish boasts on my part of your good breeding! Now you bring it up again, when I cannot escape your low talk!”
“My lady, I am sorrier than you think; but which is worse—that you should hear such a thing spoken of, or make a friend of the man who did it—and that is Lord Liftore?”
Florimel turned away, and gave her seeming attention to the moonlit waters, sweeping past the swift-sailing cutter. Malcolm’s heart ached for her: he thought she was deeply troubled. But she was not half so shocked as he imagined. Infinitely worse would have been the shock to him could he have seen how little the charge against Liftore had touched her. Alas! evil communications had already in no small degree corrupted her good manners. Lady Bellair had uttered no bad words in her hearing: had softened to decency every story that required it; had not unfrequently tacked a worldly-wise moral to the end of one; and yet, and yet, such had been the tone of her telling, such the allotment of laughter and lamentation, such the acceptance of things as necessary, and such the repudiation of things as Quixotic, puritanical, impossible, that the girl’s natural notions of the lovely and the clean had got dismally shaken and confused. Happily it was as yet more her judgment than her heart that was perverted. But had she spoken out what was in her thoughts as she looked over the great wallowing water, she would have merely said that for all that Liftore was no worse than other men. They were all the same. It was very unpleasant; but how could a lady help it? If men would behave so, were by nature like that, women must not make themselves miserable about it. They need ask no questions. They were not supposed to be acquainted with the least fragment of the facts, and they must cleave to their ignorance, and lay what blame there might be on the women concerned. The thing was too indecent even to think about. Ostrich-like they must hide their heads—close their eyes and take the vice in their arms—to love, honour, and obey, as if it were virtue’s self, and men as pure as their demands on their wives.
There are thousands that virtually reason thus: Only ignore the thing effectually, and for you it is not. Lie right thoroughly to yourself, and the thing is gone. The lie destroys the fact. So reasoned Lady Macbeth—until conscience at last awoke, and she could no longer keep even the smell of the blood from her. What need Lady Lossie care about the fisher-girl, or any other concerned with his past, so long as he behaved like a gentleman to her! Malcolm was a foolish meddling fellow, whose interference was the more troublesome that it was honest.
She stood thus gazing on the waters that heaved and swept astern, but without knowing that she saw them, her mind full of such nebulous matter as, condensed, would have made such thoughts as I have set down. And still and ever the water rolled and tossed away behind in the moonlight.
“Oh, my lady!” said Malcolm, “what it would be to have a soul as big and as clean as all this!”