The Marquis of Lossie Part 17

"If you did, you would go to him."

Florimel's eyes flashed, and her pretty lip curled. She turned to her writing table, annoyed with herself that she could not find a fitting word wherewith to rebuke his presumption--rudeness, was it not?--and a feeling of angry shame arose in her, that she, the Marchioness of Lossie, had not dignity enough to prevent her own groom from treating her like a child. But he was far too valuable to quarrel with.

She sat down and wrote a note.

"There," she said, "take that note to Mr Lenorme. I have asked him to help you in the choice of a horse."

"What price would you be willing to go to, my lady?"

"I leave that to Mr Lenorme's judgment--and your own," she added.

"Thank you, my lady," said Malcolm, and was leaving the room, when Florimel called him back.

"Next time you see Mr Graham," she said, "give him my compliments, and ask him if I can be of any service to him."

"I'll do that, my lady. I am sure he will take it very kindly."

Florimel made no answer, and Malcolm went to find the painter.

CHAPTER XXIII: PAINTER AND GROOM

The address upon the note Malcolm had to deliver took him to a house in Chelsea--one of a row of beautiful old houses fronting the Thames, with little gardens between them and the road. The one he sought was overgrown with creepers, most of them now covered with fresh spring buds. The afternoon had turned cloudy, and a cold east wind came up the river, which, as the tide was falling, raised little waves on its surface and made Malcolm think of the herring. Somehow, as he went up to the door, a new chapter of his life seemed about to commence.

The servant who took the note, returned immediately, and showed him up to the study, a large back room, looking over a good sized garden, with stables on one side. There Lenorme sat at his easel.

"Ah!" he said, "I'm glad to see that wild animal has not quite torn you to pieces. Take a chair. What on earth made you bring such an incarnate fury to London?"

"I see well enough now, sir, she's not exactly the one for London use, but if you had once ridden her, you would never quite enjoy another between your knees."

"She's such an infernal brute!"

"You can't say too ill of her. But I fancy a gaol chaplain sometimes takes the most interest in the worst villain under his charge. I should be a proud man to make her fit to live with decent people."

"I'm afraid she'll be too much for you. At last you'll have to part with her, I fear."

"If she had bitten you as often as she has me, sir, you wouldn't part with her. Besides, it would be wrong to sell her. She would only be worse with anyone else. But, indeed, though you will hardly believe it, she is better than she was."

"Then what must she have been!"

"You may well say that, sir!"

"Here your mistress tells me you want my a.s.sistance in choosing another horse."

"Yes, sir--to attend upon her in London."

"I don't profess to be knowing in horses: what made you think of me?"

"I saw how you sat your own horse, sir, and I heard you say you bought him out of a b.u.t.terman's cart, and treated him like a human being: that was enough for me, sir. I've long had the notion that the beasts, poor things, have a half sleeping, half waking human soul in them, and it was a great pleasure to hear you say something of the same sort. 'That gentleman,' I said to myself, '--he and I would understand one another.'"

"I am glad you think so," said Lenorme, with entire courtesy.--It was not merely that the very doubtful recognition of his profession by society had tended to keep him clear of his prejudices, but both as a painter and a man he found the young fellow exceedingly attractive;--as a painter from the rare combination of such strength with such beauty, and as a man from a certain yet rarer clarity of nature which to the vulgar observer seems fatuity until he has to encounter it in action, when the contrast is like meeting a thunderbolt. Naturally the dishonest takes the honest for a fool.

Beyond his understanding, he imagines him beneath it. But Lenorme, although so much more a man of the world, was able in a measure to look into Malcolm and appreciate him. His nature and his art combined in enabling him to do this.

"You see, sir," Malcolm went on, encouraged by the simplicity of Lenorme's manner, "if they were nothing like us, how should we be able to get on with them at all, teach them anything, or come a hair nearer them, do what we might? For all her wickedness I firmly believe Kelpie has a sort of regard for me--I won't call it affection, but perhaps it comes as near that as may be possible in the time to one of her temper."

"Now I hope you will permit me, Mr MacPhail," said Lenorme, who had been paying more attention to Malcolm than to his words, "to give a violent wrench to the conversation, and turn it upon yourself.

You can't be surprised, and I hope you will not be annoyed, if I say you strike one as not altogether like your calling. No London groom I have ever spoken to, in the least resembles you. How is it?"

"I hope you don't mean to imply, sir, that I don't know my business,"

returned Malcolm, laughing.

"Anything but that It were nearer the thing to say, that for all I know you may understand mine as well."

"I wish I did, sir. Except the pictures at Lossie House and those in Portland Place, I've never seen one in my life. About most of them I must say I find it hard to imagine what better the world is for them. Mr Graham says that no work that doesn't tend to make the world better makes it richer. If he were a heathen, he says, he would build a temple to Ses, the sister of Psyche."

"Ses?--I don't remember her," said Lenorme.

"The moth, sir;--'the moth and the rust,' you know."

"Yes, yes; now I know! Capital! Only more things may tend to make the world better than some people think.--Who is this Mr Graham of yours? He must be no common man."

"You are right there, sir; there is not another like him in the whole world, I believe."

And thereupon Malcolm set himself to give the painter an idea of the schoolmaster.

When they had talked about him for a little while,

"Well, all this accounts for your being a scholar," said Lenorme; "but--"

"I am little enough of that, sir," interrupted Malcolm. "Any Scotch boy that likes to learn finds the way open to him."

"I am aware of that. But were you really reading Epictetus when we left you in the park this morning?"

"Yes, sir: why not?"

"In the original?"

"Yes, sir; but not very readily. I am a poor Greek scholar. But my copy has a rough Latin translation on the opposite page, and that helps me out. It's not difficult. You would think nothing of it if it had been Cornelius Nepos, or Cordery's Colloquies. It's only a better, not a more difficult book."

"I don't know about that. It's not every one who can read Greek that can understand Epictetus. Tell me what you have learned from him?"

"That would be hard to do. A man is very ready to forget how he came first to think of the things he loves best. You see they are as much a necessity of your being as they are of the man's who thought them first. I can no more do without the truth than Plato.

It is as much my needful food and as fully mine to possess as his.

His having it, Mr Graham says, was for my sake as well as his own.

--It's just like what Sir Thomas Browne says about the faces of those we love--that we cannot retain the idea of them because they are ourselves. Those that help the world must be served like their master and a good deal forgotten, I fancy. Of course they don't mind it.--I remember another pa.s.sage I think says something to the same purpose--one in Epictetus himself," continued Malcolm, drawing the little book from his pocket and turning over the leaves, while Lenorme sat waiting, wondering, and careful not to interrupt him.