Part 17 (1/2)
”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.