The Marquis of Lossie Part 26

CHAPTER x.x.xII: A CHASTIs.e.m.e.nT

When she went to her room, there was Caley taking from a portmanteau the Highland dress which had occasioned so much. A note fell, and she handed it to her mistress. Florimel opened it, grew pale as she read it, and asked Caley to bring her a gla.s.s of water. No sooner had her maid left the room than she sprang to the door and bolted it. Then the tears burst from her eyes, she sobbed despairingly, and but for the help of her handkerchief would have wailed aloud.

When Caley returned, she answered to her knock that she was lying down, and wanted to sleep. She was, however, trying to force further communication from the note. In it the painter told her that he was going to set out the next morning for Italy, and that her portrait was at the shop of certain carvers and gliders, being fitted with a frame for which he had made drawings. Three times she read it, searching for some hidden message to her heart; she held it up between her and the light; then before the fire till it crackled like a bit of old parchment; but all was in vain: by no device, intellectual or physical, could she coax the shadow of a meaning out of it, beyond what lay plain on the surface. She must, she would see him again.

That night she was merrier than usual at dinner; after it, sang ballad after ballad to please Liftore; then went to her room and told Caley to arrange for yet a visit, the next morning, to Mr Lenorme's studio. She positively must, she said, secure her father's portrait ere the ill tempered painter--all men of genius were hasty and unreasonable--should have destroyed it utterly, as he was certain to do before leaving--and with that she showed her Lenorme's letter. Caley was all service, only said that this time she thought they had better go openly. She would see Lady Bellair as soon as Lady Lossie was in bed, and explain the thing to her.

The next morning therefore they drove to Chelsea in the carriage.

When the door opened, Florimel walked straight up to the study.

There she saw no one, and her heart, which had been fluttering strangely, sank, and was painfully still, while her gaze went wandering about the room. It fell upon the pictured temple of Isis: a thick dark veil had fallen and shrouded the whole figure of the G.o.ddess, leaving only the outline; and the form of the wors.h.i.+pping youth had vanished utterly: where he had stood, the tesselated pavement, with the serpent of life twining through it, and the sculptured walls of the temple, shone out clear and bare, as if Hyacinth had walked out into the desert to return no more. Again the tears gushed from the heart of Florimel: she had sinned against her own fame--had blotted out a fair memorial record that might have outlasted the knight of stone under the Norman canopy in Lossie church. Again she sobbed, again she choked down a cry that had else become a scream.

Arms were around her. Never doubting whose the embrace, she leaned her head against his bosom, stayed her sobs with the one word "Cruel!"

and slowly opening her tearful eyes, lifted them to the face that bent over hers. It was Liftore's. She was dumb with disappointment and dismay. It was a hateful moment. He kissed her forehead and eyes, and sought her mouth. She shrieked aloud. In her very agony at the loss of one to be kissed by another!--and there! It was too degrading! too horrid!

At the sound of her cry someone started up at the other end of the room. An easel with a large canvas on it fell, and a man came forward with great strides. Liftore let her go, with a muttered curse on the intruder, and she darted from the room into the arms of Caley, who had had her ear against the other side of the door.

The same instant Malcolm received from his lords.h.i.+p a well planted blow between the eyes, which filled them with flashes and darkness.

The next, the earl was on the floor. The ancient fury of the Celt had burst up into the nineteenth century, and mastered a n.o.ble spirit.

All Malcolm could afterwards remember was that he came to himself dealing Liftore merciless blows, his foot on his back, and his weapon the earl's whip. His lords.h.i.+p, struggling to rise, turned up a face white with hate and impotent fury.

"You d.a.m.ned flunkie!" he panted. "I'll have you shot like a mangy dog."

"Meanwhile I will chastise you like an insolent n.o.bleman," said Malcolm, who had already almost recovered his self possession. "You dare to touch my mistress!"

And with the words he gave him one more stinging cut with the whip.

"Stand off, and let it be man to man," cried Liftore, with a fierce oath, clenching his teeth in agony and rage.

"That it cannot be, my lord; but I have had enough, and so I hope has your lords.h.i.+p," said Malcolm; and as he spoke he threw the whip to the other end of the room, and stood back. Liftore sprang to his feet, and rushed at him. Malcolm caught him by the wrist with a fisherman's grasp.

"My lord, I don't want to kill you. Take a warning, and let ill be, for fear of worse," he said, and threw his hand from him with a swing that nearly dislocated his shoulder.

The warning sufficed. His lords.h.i.+p cast him one scowl of concentrated hate and revenge, and leaving the room hurried also from the house.

At the usual morning hour, Malcolm had ridden to Chelsea, hoping to find his friend in a less despairing and more companionable mood than when he left him. To his surprise and disappointment he learned that Lenorme had sailed by the packet to Ostend the night before.

He asked leave to go into the study. There on its easel stood the portrait of his father as he had last seen it--disfigured with a great smear of brown paint across the face. He knew that the face was dry, and he saw that the smear was wet: he would see whether he could not, with turpentine and a soft brush, remove the insult.

In this endeavour he was so absorbed, and by the picture itself was so divided from the rest of the room, that he neither saw nor heard anything until Florimel cried out.

Naturally, those events made him yet more dissatisfied with his sister's position. Evil influences and dangers were on all sides of her--the worst possible outcome being that, loving one man, she should marry another, and him such a man as Liftore. Whatever he heard in the servants' hall, both tone and substance, only confirmed the unfavourable impression he had had from the first of the bold faced countess. The oldest of her servants had, he found; the least respect for their mistress, although all had a certain liking for her, which gave their disrespect the heavier import.

He must get Florimel away somehow. While all was right between her and the painter he had been less anxious about her immediate surroundings, trusting that Lenorme would ere long deliver her.

But now she had driven him from the very country, and he had left no clue to follow him up by. His housekeeper could tell nothing of his purposes. The gardener and she were left in charge as a matter of course. He might be back in a week, or a year; she could not even conjecture.

Seeming possibilities, in varied mingling with rank absurdities pa.s.sing through Malcolm's mind, as, after Liftore's punishment, he lifted the portrait, set it again upon its easel, and went on trying to clean the face of it--with no small promise of success.

But as he made progress he grew anxious--lest with the defilement, he should remove some of the colour as well: the painter alone, he concluded at length could be trusted to restore the work he had ruined.

He left the house, walked across the road to the riverbank, and gave a short sharp whistle. In an instant Davy was in the dinghy, pulling for the sh.o.r.e. Malcolm went on board the yacht, saw that all was right, gave some orders, went ash.o.r.e again, and mounted Kelpie.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII: LIES

In pain, wrath, and mortification, Liftore rode home. What would the men at his club say if they knew that he had been thrashed by a scoundrel of a groom for kissing his mistress? The fact would soon be out: he must do his best to have it taken for what it ought to be--namely, fiction. It was the harder upon him that he knew himself no coward. He must punish the rascal somehow--he owed it to society to punish him; but at present he did not see how, and the first thing was to have the first word with Florimel; he must see her before she saw the ruffian. He rode as hard as he dared to Curzon Street, sent his groom to the stables, telling him he should want the horses again before lunch, had a hot bath, of which he stood in dire need, and some brandy with his breakfast, and then, all unfit for exercise as he was, walked to Portland Place.

Mistress and maid rode home together in silence. The moment Florimel heard Malcolm's voice she had left the house. Caley following had heard enough to know that there was a scuffle at least going on in the study, and her eye witnessed against her heart that Liftore could have no chance with the detested groom if the respect of the latter gave way: would MacPhail thrash his lords.h.i.+p? If he did, it would be well she should know it. In the hoped event of his lords.h.i.+p's marrying her mistress, it was desirable, not only that she should be in favour with both of them, but that she should have some hold upon each of a more certainly enduring nature: if she held secrets with husband and wife separately, she would be in clover for the period of her natural existence. As to Florimel, she was enraged at the liberties Liftore had taken with her. But alas! was she not in some degree in his power? He had found her there, and in tears! How did he come to be there? If Malcolm's judgment of her was correct, Caley might have told him. Was she already false? She pondered within herself, and cast no look upon her maid until she had concluded how best to carry herself towards the earl. Then glancing at the hooded cobra beside her--"What an awkward thing that Lord Liftore, of all moments, should appear just then!" she said. "How could it be?"

"I'm sure I haven't an idea, my lady," returned Caley. "My lord has been always kind to Mr Lenorme, and I suppose he has been in the way of going to see him at work. Who would have thought my lord had been such an early riser! There are not many gentlemen like him nowadays, my lady! Did your ladys.h.i.+p hear the noise in the studio after you left it?"

"I heard high words," answered her mistress, "--nothing more.

How on earth did MacPhail come to be there as well?--From you, Caley, I will not conceal that his lords.h.i.+p behaved indiscreetly; in fact he was rude; and I can quite imagine that MacPhail thought it his duty to defend me. It is all very awkward for me. Who could have imagined him there, and sitting behind amongst the pictures!

It almost makes me doubt whether Mr Lenorme be really gone."

"It seems to me, my lady," returned Caley, "that the man is always just where he ought not to be, always meddling with something he has no business with. I beg your pardon, my lady," she went on, "but wouldn't it be better to get some staid elderly man for a groom, one who has been properly bred up to his duties and taught his manners in a gentleman's stable? It is so odd to have a groom from a rough seafaring set--one who behaves like the rude fisherman he is, never having had to obey orders of lord or lady! The worst of it is, your ladys.h.i.+p will soon be the town's talk if you have such a groom on such a horse after you everywhere."

Florimel's face flushed. Caley saw she was angry, and held her peace.

Breakfast was hardly over, when Liftore walked in, looking pale, and, in spite of his faultless get up, somewhat disreputable: for shame, secret pain, and anger do not favour a good carriage or honest mien. Florimel threw herself back in her chair--an action characteristic of the bold faced countess, and held out her left hand to him in an expansive, benevolent sort of way.

"How dare you come into my presence, looking so well pleased with yourself, my lord, after giving me such a fright this morning?"

she said. "You might at least have made sure that there was--that we were--"

She could not bring herself to complete the sentence.

"My dearest girl!" said his lords.h.i.+p, not only delighted to get off so pleasantly, but profoundly flattered by the implied understanding, "I found you in tears, and how could I think of anything else? It may have been stupid, but I trust you will think it pardonable."

Caley had not fully betrayed her mistress to his lords.h.i.+p, and he had, entirely to his own satisfaction, explained the liking of Florimel for the society of the painter as the mere fancy of a girl for the admiration of one whose employment, although nothing above the servile, yet gave him a claim something beyond that of a milliner or hair dresser, to be considered a judge in matters of appearance. As to anything more in the affair--and with him in the field--of such a notion he was simply incapable: he could not have wronged the lady he meant to honour with his hand, by regarding it as within the bounds of the possible.

"It was no wonder I was crying," said Florimel. "A seraph would have cried to see the state my father's portrait was in."

"Your father's portrait!"

"Yes. Did you not know? Mr Lenorme has been painting one from a miniature I lent him--under my supervision, of course; and just because I let fall a word that showed I was not altogether satisfied with the likeness, what should the wretched man do but catch up a brush full of filthy black paint, and smudge the face all over!"

"Oh, Lenorme will soon set it to rights again. He's not a bad fellow though he does belong to the genus irritabile. I will go about it this very day."

"You'll not find him, I'm sorry to say. There's a note I had from him yesterday. And the picture's quite unfit to be seen--utterly ruined. But I can't think how you could miss it!"

"To tell you the truth, Florimel, I had a bit of a scrimmage after you left me in the studio." Here his lords.h.i.+p did his best to imitate a laugh. "Who should come rus.h.i.+ng upon me out of the back regions of paint and canvas but that mad groom of yours! I don't suppose you knew he was there?"

"Not I. I saw a man's feet--that was all."

"Well, there he was, for what reason the devil knows, perdu amongst the painter's litter; and when he heard your little startled cry --most musical, most melancholy--what should he fancy but that you were frightened, and he must rush to the rescue! And so he did with a vengeance: I don't know when I shall quite forget the blow he gave me." And again Liftore laughed, or thought he did.

"He struck you!" exclaimed Florimel, rather astonished, but hardly able for inward satisfaction to put enough of indignation into her tone.

"He did, the fellow!--But don't say a word about it, for I thrashed him so unmercifully that, to tell the truth, I had to stop because I grew sorry for him. I am sorry now. So I hope you will take no notice of it. In fact, I begin to like the rascal: you know I was never favourably impressed with him. By Jove! it is not every mistress that can have such a devoted attendant. I only hope his over zeal in your service may never get you into some compromising position. He is hardly, with all his virtues, the proper servant for a young lady to have about her; he has had no training--no proper training at all, you see. But you must let the villain nurse himself for a day or two anyhow. It would be torture to make him ride, after what I gave him."