Part 67 (1/2)
”Neither. But do not drive me to give the rein to my tongue. Let it be enough to say that my house shall never be what your presence would make it.”
He turned to the fishermen.
”Three of you take that lord to the town gate, and leave him on the other side of it. His servant shall follow as soon as the horses come.”
”I will go with you,” said Florimel, crossing to Lady Bellair.
Malcolm took her by the arm. For one moment she struggled, but finding no one dared interfere, submitted, and was led from the room like a naughty child.
”Keep my lord there till I return,” he said as he went.
He led her into the room which had been her mother's boudoir, and when he had shut the door,
”Florimel,” he said, ”I have striven to serve you the best way I knew. Your father, when he confessed me his heir, begged me to be good to you, and I promised him. Would I have given all these months of my life to the poor labour of a groom, allowed my people to be wronged and oppressed, my grandfather to be a wanderer, and my best friend to sit with his lips of wisdom sealed, but for your sake? I can hardly say it was for my father's sake, for I should have done the same had he never said a word about you. Florimel, I loved my sister, and longed for her goodness. But she has foiled all my endeavours. She has not loved or followed the truth. She has been proud and disdainful, and careless of right. Yourself young and pure, and naturally recoiling from evil, you have yet cast from you the devotion of a n.o.ble, gifted, large hearted, and great souled man, for the miserable preference of the smallest, meanest, vilest of men. Nor that only! for with him you have sided against the woman he most bitterly wrongs: and therein you wrong the nature and the G.o.d of women. Once more, I pray you to give up this man; to let your true self speak and send him away.”
”Sir, I go with my Lady Bellair, driven from her father's house by one who calls himself my brother. My lawyer shall make inquiries.”
She would have left the room, but he intercepted her.
”Florimel,” he said, ”you are casting the pearl of your womanhood before a swine. He will trample it under his feet and turn again and rend you. He will treat you worse still than poor Lizzy, whom he troubles no more with his presence.”
He had again taken her arm in his great grasp.
”Let me go. You are brutal. I shall scream.”
”You shall not go until you have heard all the truth.”
”What! more truth still? Your truth is anything but pleasant.”
”It is more unpleasant yet than you surmise. Florimel, you have driven me to it. I would have prepared you a s.h.i.+eld against the shock which must come, but you compel me to wound you to the quick.
I would have had you receive the bitter truth from lips you loved, but you drove those lips of honour from you, and now there are left to utter it only the lips you hate, yet the truth you shall receive: it may help to save you from weakness, arrogance, and falsehood.--Sister, your mother was never Lady Lossie.”
”You lie. I know you lie. Because you wrong me, you would brand me with dishonour, to take from me as well the sympathy of the world.
But I defy you.”
”Alas! there is no help, sister. Your mother indeed pa.s.sed as Lady Lossie, but my mother, the true Lady Lossie, was alive all the time, and in truth, died only last year. For twenty years my mother suffered for yours in the eye of the law. You are no better than the little child his father denied in your presence. Give that man his dismissal, or he will give you yours. Never doubt it. Refuse again, and I go from this room to publish in the next the fact that you are neither Lady Lossie nor Lady Florimel Colonsay. You have no right to any name but your mother's. You are Miss Gordon.”
She gave a great gasp at the word, but bravely fought the horror that was taking possession of her. She stood with one hand on the back of a chair, her face white, her eyes starting, her mouth a little open and rigid--her whole appearance, except for the breath that came short and quick, that of one who had died in sore pain.
”All that is now left you,” concluded Malcolm, ”is the choice between sending Liftore away, and being abandoned by him. That choice you must now make.”
The poor girl tried to speak, but could not. Her fire was burning out, her forced strength fast failing her.
”Florimel,” said Malcolm, and knelt on one knee and took her hand.
It gave a flutter as if it would fly like a bird; but the net of his love held it, and it lay pa.s.sive and cold. ”Florimel, I will be your true brother. I am your brother, your very own brother, to live for you, love you, fight for you, watch and ward you, till a true man takes you for his wife.” Her hand quivered like a leaf.
”Sister, when you and I appear before our father, I shall hold up my face before him: will you?”
”Send him away,” she breathed rather than said, and sank on the floor. He lifted her, laid her on a couch, and returned to the drawing room.