“But it would be murder,” he added, “not knowing myself what experience he has had.”
“I see,” said the lady to herself; but loud enough for Malcolm to hear, for her tender-heartedness had made her both angry and unjust, “his self-conceit is equal to his cruelty—just what I might have expected!”
With the words she turned her horse’s head and rode away, leaving a lump in Malcolm’s throat.
“I wuss fowk”—he still spoke in Scotch in his own chamber— “wad du as they’re tell’t, an’ no jeedge ane anither. I’m sure it’s Kelpie’s best chance o’ salvation ’at I gang on wi’ her. Stable-men wad ha’e had her brocken doon a’thegither by this time; an’ life wad ha’e had little relish left.”
It added hugely to the bitterness of being thus rebuked, that he had never in his life seen such a radiance of beauty’s softest light as shone from the face and form of the reproving angel.— “Only she canna be an angel,” he said to himself; “or she wad ha’e ken’t better.”
She was young—not more than twenty, tall and graceful, with a touch of the matronly, which she must have had even in childhood, for it belonged to her—so staid, so stately was she in all her grace. With her brown hair, her lily complexion, her blue-gray eyes, she was all of the moonlight and its shadows—even now, in the early morning, and angry. Her nose was so nearly perfect that one never thought of it. Her mouth was rather large, but had gained in value of shape, and in the expression of indwelling sweetness, with every line that carried it beyond the measure of smallness. Most little mouths are pretty, some even lovely, but not one have I seen beautiful. Her forehead was the sweetest of half-moons. Of those who knew her best some absolutely believed that a radiance resembling moonlight shimmered from its precious expanse.
“Be ye angry and sin not,” had always been a puzzle to Malcolm, who had, as I have said, inherited a certain Celtic fierceness; but now, even while he knew himself the object of the anger, he understood the word. It tried him sorely, however, that such gentleness and beauty should be unreasonable. Could it be that he should never have a chance of convincing her how mistaken she was concerning his treatment of Kelpie! What a celestial rosy red her face had glowed! and what summer lightnings had flashed up in her eyes, as if they had been the horizons of heavenly worlds up which flew the dreams that broke from the brain of a young sleeping goddess, to make the worlds glad also in the night of their slumber.
Something like this Malcolm felt: whoever saw her must feel as he had never felt before. He gazed after her long and earnestly.
“It’s an awfu’ thing to ha’e a wuman like that angert at ye!” he said to himself when at length she had disappeared, “—as bonny as she is angry! God be praised ’at he kens a’thing, an’ ’s no angert wi’ ye for the luik o’ a thing! But the wheel may come roon’ again—wha kens? Ony gait I s’ mak the best o’ Kelpie I can.— I won’er gien she kens Leddy Florimel! She’s a heap mair boontifu’ like in her beauty nor her. The man micht haud ’s ain wi’ an archangel ’at had a wuman like that to the wife o’ ’m.—Hoots! I’ll be wussin’ I had had anither upbringin’, ’at I micht ha’ won a step nearer to the hem o’ her garment! an’ that wad be to deny him ’at made an’ ordeen’t me. I wull not du that. But I maun hae a crack wi’ Maister Graham, anent things twa or three, jist to haud me straucht, for I’m jist girnin’ at bein’ sae regairdit by sic a Revelation. Gien she had been an auld wife, I wad ha’e only lauchen: what for ’s that? I doobt I’m no muckle mair rizzonable nor hersel’! The thing was this, I fancy it was sae clear she spak frae no ill-natur’, only frae pure humanity. She’s a gran’ ane yon, only some saft, I doobt.”
For the lady, she rode away sadly strengthened in her doubts whether there could be a God in the world—not because there were in it such men as she took Malcolm for, but because such a lovely animal had fallen into his hands.