Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/409

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came a breath of something in the east. It was neither wind nor warmth. It was light before it is light to the eyes of men. Slowly and softly it grew, until, like the dawning soul in the face of one who lies in a faint, the life of light came back to the world, and at last the whole huge hollow hemisphere of rushing sea and cloud-flecked sky lay like a great empty heart, waiting, in conscious glory of the light, for the central glory, the coming lord of day. And in the whole crystalline hollow, gleaming and flowing with delight, yet waiting for more, the Psyche was the one only lonely life-bearing thing — the one cloudy germ-spot afloat in the bosom of the great roc-egg of sea and sky, whose sheltering nest was the universe with its walls of flame.

Florimel woke, rose, went on deck, and for a moment was fresh born. It was a fore-scent — even this could not be called a fore-taste — of the kingdom of heaven; but Florimel never thought of the kingdom of heaven, the ideal of her own existence. She could, however, half appreciate this earthly outbreak of its glory, this incarnation of truth invisible. Round her, like a thousand doves, clamored with greeting wings the joyous sea-wind. Up came a thousand dancing billows to shout their good-morning. Like a petted animal importunate for play, the breeze tossed her hair and dragged at her fluttering garments, then rushed into the Psyche's sails, swelled them yet deeper, and sent her dancing over the dancers. The sun peered up like a mother waking and looking out on her frolicking children. Black shadows fell from sail to sail, slipping and shifting, and one long shadow of the Psyche herself shot over the world to the very gates of the west, but held her not, for she danced and leaned and flew as if she had but just begun her coranto-lavolta fresh with the morning, and had not been dancing all the livelong night over the same floor. Lively as any new-born butterfly — not like a butterfly's flitting and hovering — was her flight, for still, like one that longed, she sped and strained and flew. The joy of bare life swelled in Florimel's bosom. She looked up, she looked around, she breathed deep. The cloudy anger that had rushed upon her like a watching tiger the moment she waked fell back, and left her soul a clear mirror to reflect God's dream of a world. She turned and saw Malcolm at the tiller, and the cloudy wrath sprung upon her. He stood composed and clear and cool as the morning, without sign of doubt or conscience of wrong, now peeping into the binnacle, now glancing at the sunny sails, where swayed across and back the dark shadows of the rigging as the cutter leaned and rose like a child running and staggering over the multitudinous and unstable hillocks. She turned from him.

"Good-morning, my lady! What a good morning it is!" As in all his address to his mistress, the freedom of the words did not infect the tone: that was resonant of essential honor. "Strange to think," he went on, "that the sun himself there is only a great fire, and knows nothing about 'it! There must be a sun to that sun, or the whole thing is a vain show. There must be One to whom each is itself, yet the all makes a whole — One who is at once both centre and circumference to all."

Florimel cast on him a scornful look. For not merely was he talking his usual unintelligible rubbish of poetry, but he had the impertinence to speak as if he had done nothing amiss and she had no ground for being offended with him. She made him no answer. A cloud came over Malcolm's face, and until she went again below he gave his attention to his steering.

In the mean time, Rose, who happily had turned out as good a sailor as her new mistress, had tidied the little cabin, and Florimel found, if not quite such a sumptuous breakfast laid as at Portland Place, yet a far better appetite than usual to meet what there was; and when she had finished her temper was better, and she was inclined to think less indignantly of Malcolm's share in causing her so great a pleasure. She was not yet quite spoilsed. She was still such a lover of the visible world and of personal freedom that the thought of returning to London and its leaden footed hours would now have been unendurable. At this moment she could have imagined no better thing than thus to go tearing through the water — home to her home. For although she had spent little of her life at Lossie House, she could not but prefer it unspeakably to the schools in which she had passed almost the whole of the preceding portion of it. There was little or nothing in the affair she could have wished otherwise except its origin. She was mischievous enough to enjoy even the thought of the consternation it would cause at Portland Place. She did not realize all its awkwardness. A letter to Lady Bellair when she reached 