Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/482

476 The result was, that Mr. Crathie went home — not indeed a humbler or wiser man than he had gone, but a thwarted man, and therefore the more dangerous in the channels left open to the outrush of his angry power.

When Lizzy reached Scaurnose her account of the factor's behavior, to her surprise, did not take much effect on Mrs. Mair: a queer little smile broke over her countenance, and vanished. An enforced gravity succeeded, however, and she began to take counsel with Lizzy as to what they could do, or where they could go, should the worst come to the worst, and the doors not only of her own house, but of Scaurnose and Portlossie as well, be shut against them. But through it all reigned a calm regard and fearlessness of the future which to Lizzy's roused and apprehensive imagination was strangely inexplicable. Annie Mair seemed possessed of some hidden and upholding assurance that raised her above the fear of man or what he could do to her. The girl concluded it must be the knowledge of God, and prayed more earnestly that night than she had prayed since the night on which Malcolm had talked to her so earnestly before he left. I must add this much — that she was not altogether astray; God was in Malcolm giving new hope to his fisher-folk.

 

Malcolm left his sister he had a dim sense of having lapsed into Scotch, and set about buttressing and strengthening his determination to get rid of all unconscious and unintended use of the northern dialect, not only that in his attendance upon Florimel he might be neither offensive nor ridiculous, but that when the time should come in which he must appear what he was, it might be less of an annoyance to her to yield the marquisate to one who could speak like a gentleman and one of the family. But not the less did he love the tongue he had spoken from his childhood, and in which were on record so many precious ballads and songs, old and new; and he resolved that when he came out as marquis he would at Lossie House indemnify himself for the constraint of London. He would not have an English servant there except Mrs. Courthope: he would not have the natural country speech corrupted with cockneyisms and his people taught to speak like Wallis. To his old friends, the fishers and their families, he would never utter a sentence but in the old tongue, haunted with all the memories of relations that were never to be obliterated or forgotten, its very tones reminding him and them of hardships together endured, pleasures shared and help willingly given. At night, notwithstanding, he found that in talking with Blue Peter he had forgotten all about his resolve, and it vexed him with himself not a little. He now saw that if he could but get into the way of speaking English to him, the victory would be gained, for with no one else would he find any difficulty then.

The next morning he went down to the stairs at London Bridge and took a boat to the yacht. He had to cross several vessels to reach it. When at length he looked down from one of them on the deck of the little cutter, he saw Blue Peter sitting on the coamings of the companion hatchway, with his feet hanging down within, lost in the book he was reading. Curious to see, without disturbing him, what it was that so absorbed him, he dropped quietly on the tiller and thence on the deck, and approaching softly peeped over his shoulder, and saw that he was reading the Epistle of James the Apostle. From Peter's thumbed Bible Malcolm's eyes went wandering through the thicket of masts, in which moved so many busy seafarers, and then turned to the docks and wharves and huge warehouses lining the shores; and while they scanned the marvelous vision thoughts like these arose and passed through his brain: "What are ye duin' here, Jeames the just? Ye was naething but a fisherbody upon a sma' watter i' the hert o' the hills, 'at wasna even saut; an' what can the thouchts that gaed throu' your fish-catchin' brain hae to do wi' sic a sicht 's this? I won'er gien at this moment there be another man in a' Lon'on sittin' readin' that epistle o' yours but Blue Peter here? He thinks there's naething o' mair importance, 'cep' maybe some ither pairts o' the same buik; but syne he's but a puir fisher-body himsel', an' what kens he o' the wisdom an' riches an' pooer o' this michty queen o' the nations thront about 'im? Is 't possible the auld body kent something that was jist as necessar' to ilka man, the busiest in this croodit mairt, to ken an' gang by, as it was to Jeames an' the lave o' the michty apostles themsel's? For me, I dinna doobt it, but hoo it sud ever he onything but an auld-warld story to the new warld o' Lon'on, I think it wud bleck Maister Graham himsel' til imaigine."

Before this, Blue Peter had become aware that some one was near him, but, 