"I give her to you," he said, "for you are good."
With that he left them, and sought Mr. Morrison and Mr. Soutar, who were waiting him over a glass of wine after their lunch. An hour of business followed, in which, amongst other matters, they talked about the needful arrangements for a dinner to his people, fishers and farmers and all. After the gentlemen took their leave nobody saw him for hours. Till sunset approached he remained alone, shut up in the Wizard's Chamber, the room in which he was born. Part of the time he occupied in writing to Mr. Graham.
As the sun's orbed furnace fell behind the tumbling waters, Malcolm turned his face inland from the wet strip of shining shore on which he had been pacing, and ascended the sandhill. From the other side Clementina but a moment later ascended also. On the top they met in the red light of the sunset. They clasped each other's hand, and stood for a moment in silence.
"Ah, my lord," said the lady, "how shall I thank you that you kept your secret from me? But my heart is sore to lose my fisherman."
"My lady," returned Malcolm, "you have not lost your fisherman: you have only found your groom."
And the sun went down, and the twilight came, and the night followed, and the world of sea and land and wind and vapor was around them, and the universe of stars and spaces over and under them, and eternity within them, and the heart of each for a chamber to the other, and God filling all—nay, nay, God's heart containing, infolding, cherishing all, saving all, from height to height of intensest being, by the bliss of that love whose absolute devotion could utter itself only in death.
CHAPTER LXXI.
THE ASSEMBLY.
That same evening Duncan in full dress, claymore and dirk at his sides and carrying the great Lossie pipes, marched first through the streets of the upper, then through the closes of the lower, town, followed by the bellman, who had been appointed crier upon his disappearance. At the proper stations Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town-hall of the same, at seven of the clock upon the evening next following. The proclamation ended, the piper sounded one note three times, and they passed to the next station. When they had gone through the Seaton they entered a carriage waiting for them at the sea-gate, and were driven to Scaurnose, and thence again to the several other villages on the coast belonging to the marquis, making at each in like manner the same announcement.
Portlossie was in a ferment of wonder, satisfaction and pleasure. There were few in it who were not glad at the accession of Malcolm, and with every one of those few the cause lay in himself. In the shops, among the nets, in the curing-sheds, in the houses and cottages, nothing else was talked about; and stories and reminiscences innumerable were brought out, chiefly to prove that Malcolm had always appeared likely to turn out somebody, the narrator not seldom modestly hinting at a glimmering foresight on his own part of what had now been at length revealed to the world. His friends were jubilant as revellers. For Meg Partan, she ran from house to house like a maniac, laughing and crying. It was as if the whole Seaton had suddenly been translated. The men came crowding about Duncan, congratulating him and asking him a hundred questions. But the old man maintained a reticence whose dignity was strangely mingled of pomp and grace; sat calm and stately, as feeling the glow of reflected honor; would not, by word, gesture, tone or exclamation, confess to any surprise; behaved as if he had known it all the time; made no pretence, however, of having known it—merely treated the fact as not a whit more than might have been looked for by one who had known Malcolm as he had known him.