Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/742

736 and the rose-diamond stars, his thought half dissolved in feeling and his feeling half crystallized to thought.

Out of the dim wood came two lovely forms into the moonlight, and softly approached him — so softly that he knew nothing of their nearness until Florimel spoke. "Is that MacPhail?" she said.

"Yes, my lady," answered Malcolm, and bounded to his feet.

"What were you singing?"

"You could hardly call it singing, my lady. We should call it crooning in Scotland."

"Croon it again, then."

"I couldn't, my lady. It's gone."

"You don't mean to pretend that you were extemporizing?"

"I was crooning what came like the birds, my lady. I couldn't have done it if I had thought any one was near." Then, half-ashamed, and anxious to turn the talk from the threshold of his secret chamber, he said, "Did you ever see a lovelier night, ladies?"

"Not often, certainly," answered Clementina.

She was not quite pleased and not altogether offended at his addressing them dually. A curious sense of impropriety in the state of things bewildered her — she and her friend talking thus in the moonlight on the seashore, doing nothing, with her groom — and such a groom! — she asking him to sing again, and he addressing them both with a remark on the beauty of the night. She had braved the world a good deal, but she did not choose to brave it where nothing was to be had, and she was too honest to say to herself that the world would never know — that there was nothing to brave: she was not one to do that in secret to which she would not hold her face. Yet all the time she had a doubt whether this young man, whom it would certainly be improper to encourage by addressing from any level but one of lofty superiority, did not belong to a higher sphere than theirs; while certainly no man could be more unpresuming or less forward, even when opposing his opinion to theirs. Still, if an angel were to come down and take charge of their horses, would ladies be justified in treating him as other than a servant?

"This is just the sort of night," Malcolm resumed, u when I could almost persuade myself I was not quite sure I wasn't dreaming. It makes a kind of borderland betwixt waking and sleeping, knowing and dreaming, in our brain. In a night like this I fancy we feel something like the color of what God feels when he is making the lovely chaos of a new world — a new kind of world, such as has never been before."

"I think we had better go in," said Clementina to Florimel, and turned away. Florimel made no objection, and they walked toward the wood.

"You really must get rid of him as soon as you can," said Clementina when again the moonless night of the pines had received them: "he is certainly more than half a lunatic. It is almost full moon now," she added, looking up. "I have never seen him so bad."

Florimel's clear laugh rang through the wood. "Don't be alarmed, Clementina," she said. "He has talked like that ever since I knew him; and if he is mad, at least he is no worse than he has always been. It is nothing but poetry — yeast on the brain, my father used to say. We should have a fish-poet of him — a new thing in the world, he said. He would never be cured till he broke out in a book of poetry I should be afraid my father would break the catechism and not rest in his grave till the resurrection if I were to send Malcolm away."

For Malcolm, he was at first not a little mazed at the utter blankness of the wall against which his words had dashed themselves. Then he smiled queerly to himself, and said, "I used to think ilka bonny lassie bude to be a poetess, for hoo sud she be bonnie but by the informin' hermony o' her bein'? an' what's that but the poetry o' the poet, the makar, as they ca'd a poet i' the auld Scots tongue? But haith! I ken better an' waur noo. There's gane the twa bonniest I ever saw, an' I s' lay my heid there's mair poetry in auld man-faced Miss Horn nor in a dizzen like them. Ech! but it's some sair to bide! It's sair upon a man to see a bonny wuman 'at has nae poetry, nae inward lichtsome harmony in her. But it's dooms sairer yet to come upo' ane wantin' cowmon sense. Saw onybody ever sic a gran' sicht as my leddy Clementina! — an' wha can say but she's weel named frae the hert oot? — as guid at the hert, I'll sweir, as at the een! But, eh me! to hear the blether o' nonsense at comes oot atween thae twa bonny yetts o' music! an' a' 'cause she winna gie her hert rist an' time eneuch to grow bigger, but maun ave be settin' a' things richt afore their time an' her ain fitness for the job! It's sic a faithless kin' o' a w'y that! I cud jist fancy I saw her gaein' a' roon' the trees o' a summer nicht, pittin' honey upo' the 