“What insolence do you intend now?”
“The Chinese, my lady, pay the highest respect to their departed parents. When I said there was one who would blame you a little, I meant your father.”
He touched his cap, and withdrew.
“Send Rose to me,” Florimel called after him, and presently with her went down to the cabin.
And still the Psyche soul-like flew. Her earthly birth held her to the earth, but the ocean upbore her, and the breath of God drove her on. Little thought Florimel to what she hurried her! A queen in her own self-sufficiency and condescension, she could not suspect how little of real queendom, noble and self-sustaining, there was in her being; for not a soul of man or woman whose every atom leans not upon its father-fact in God, can sustain itself when the outer wall of things begins to tumble towards the centre, crushing it in on every side.
During the voyage no further allusion was made by either to what had passed. By the next morning Florimel had yet again recovered her temper, and, nothing fresh occurring to irritate her, kept it and was kind.
Malcolm was only too glad to accept whatever parings of heart she might offer. By the time their flight was over, Florimel almost felt as if it had indeed been undertaken at her own desire and motion, and was quite prepared to assert that such was the fact.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE SHORE.
It was two days after the longest day of the year, when there is no night in those regions, only a long twilight, in which many dream and do not know it. There had been a week of variable weather, with sudden changes of wind to east and north, and round again by south to west, and then there had been a calm for several days. But now the little wind there was blew from the north-east; and the fervour of June was rendered more delicious by the films of flavouring cold that floated through the mass of heat. All Portlossie more and less, the Seaton especially, was in a state of excitement, for its little neighbour, Scaurnose, was more excited still. There the man most threatened, and with greatest injustice, was the only one calm amongst the men, and amongst the women his wife was the only one that was calmer than he. Blue Peter was resolved to abide the stroke of wrong, and not resist the powers that were, believing them in some true sense, which he found it hard to understand when he thought of the factor as the individual instance, ordained of God. He had a dim perception too that it was better that one, that one he, should suffer, than that order should be destroyed and law defied. Suffering, he might still in patience possess his soul, and all be well with him; but what would become of the country if everyone wronged were to take the law into his own hands? Thousands more would be wronged by the lawless in a week than by unjust powers in a year. But the young men were determined to pursue their plan of resistance, and those of the older and soberer who saw the uselessness of it, gave themselves little trouble to change the minds of the rest.
Peter, although he knew they were not for peace, neither inquired what their purpose might be, nor allowed any conjecture or suspicion concerning it to influence him in his preparations for departure. Not that he had found a new home. Indeed he had not heartily set about searching for one; in part because, unconsciously to himself he was buoyed up by the hope he read so clear in the face of his more trusting wife—that Malcolm would come to deliver them. His plan was to leave her and his children with certain friends at Port Gordon; he would not hear of going to the Partans to bring them into trouble. He would himself set out immediately after for the Lewis fishing.