Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/160

154 what might he not become with such privileges as ——"

Good Clementina! what did she mean? Did she imagine that such mere gifts as she might give him could do for him more than the great sea, with the torment and conquest of its winds and tempests? more than his own ministrations of love and victories over passion and pride? What the final touches of the shark-skin are to the marble that stands lord of the flaming bow, that only can wealth and position be to the man who has yielded neither to the judgments of the world nor the drawing of his own inclinations, and so has submitted himself to the chisel and mallet of his Maker. Society is the barber who trims a man's hair, often very badly too, and pretends he made it grow. If her owner should take her, body and soul, and make of her being a gift to his — ah, then indeed! But Clementina was not yet capable of perceiving that, while what she had in her thought to offer might hurt him, it could do him little good. Her feeling concerning him, however, was all the time far indeed from folly. Not for a moment did she imagine him in love with her. Possibly she admired him too much to attribute to him such an intolerable and insolent presumption as that would have appeared to her own inferior self. Still, she was far indeed from certain, were she, as befits the woman so immeasurably beyond even the aspiration of the man, to make him offer implicit of hand and havings, that he would reach out his hand to take them. And certainly that she was not going to do; in which determination, whether she knew it or not, there was as much modesty and gracious doubt of her own worth as there was pride and maidenly recoil. In one resolve she was confident, that her behavior toward him should be such as to keep him just where he was, affording him no smallest excuse for taking one step nearer, and they would soon be in London, where she would see nothing — or next to nothing — more of him. But should she ever cease to thank God — that was, if ever she came to find him — that in this room he had shown her what he could do in the way of making a man? Heartily she wished she knew a nobleman or two like him. In the mean time she meant to enjoy with carefulness the ride to London, after which things should be as before they left.

The morning arrived; they finished breakfast; the horses came round and stood at the door, all but Kelpie. The ladies mounted. Ah, what a morning to leave the country and go back to London! The sun shone clear on the dark pine woods; the birds were radiant in song; all under the trees the ferns were unrolling each its mystery of ever-generating life; the soul of the summer was there, whose mere idea sends the heart into the eyes, while itself flits mocking from the cage of words. A gracious mystery it was — in the air, in the sun, in the earth, in their own hearts. The lights of heaven mingled and played with the shadows of the earth, which looked like the souls of the trees, that had been out wandering all night, and had been overtaken by the sun ere they could re-enter their dark cells. Every motion of the horses under them was like a throb of the heart of the earth, every bound like a sigh of her bliss. Florimel shouted almost like a boy with ecstasy, and Clementina's moonlight went very near changing into sunlight as she gazed and breathed and knew that she was alive.

They started without Malcolm, for he must always put his mistress up and then go back to the stable for Kelpie. In a moment they were in the wood, crossing its shadows. It was like swimming their horses through a sea of shadows. Then came a little stream, and the horses splashed it about like children from very gamesomeness. Half a mile more, and there was a saw-mill with a mossy wheel, a pond behind dappled with sun and shade, a dark rush of water along a brown trough, and the air full of the sweet smell of sawn wood. Clementina had not once looked behind, and did not know whether Malcolm had yet joined them or not. All at once the wild vitality of Kelpie filled the space beside her, and the voice of Malcolm was in her ears. She turned her head. He was looking very solemn.

"Will you let me tell you, my lady, what this always makes me think of?" he said.

"What in particular do you mean?" returned Clementina coldly.

"This smell of new-sawn wood that fills the air, my lady."

She bowed her head.

"It makes me think of Jesus in his father's workshop," said Malcolm — "how he must have smelled the same sweet scent of the trees of the world, broken for the uses of men, that is now so sweet to me. Oh, my lady, it makes the earth very holy and very lovely to think that as we are in the world, so was he in the world. Oh, my lady, think! If God should be so nearly one with us that it was 