_ CHAPTER LV. THE SAME NIGHT
When he came within sight of it, however, he perceived, by the hurried movement of lights, that instead of being folded in silence, the house was in unwonted commotion. As he hastened to the south door, the prince of the power of the air himself seemed to resist his entrance, so fiercely did the wind, eddying round the building, dispute every step he made towards it; and when at length he reached and opened it, a blast, rushing up the glen straight from the sea, burst wide the opposite one, and roared through the hall like a torrent. Lady Florimel, flitting across it at the moment, was almost blown down, and shrieked aloud for help. Malcolm was already at the north door, exerting all his strength to close it, when she spied him, and, bounding to him, with white face and dilated eyes, exclaimed--"Oh Malcolm! what a time you have been!"
"What's wrang, my leddy?" cried Malcolm with respondent terror.
"Don't you hear it?" she answered. "The wind is blowing the house down. There's just been a terrible fall, and every moment I hear it going. If my father were only come! We shall be all blown into the burn."
"Nae fear o' that, my leddy!" returned Malcolm. "The wa's o' the auld carcass are 'maist live rock, an' 'ill stan' the warst win' 'at ever blew--this side o' the tropics, ony gait. Gien 't war ance to get its nose in, I wadna say but it micht tirr (strip) the rufe, but it winna blaw 's intil the burn, my leddy. I'll jist gang and see what's the mischeef."
He was moving away, but Lady Florimel stopped him. "No, no, Malcolm!" she said. "It's very silly of me, I dare say; but I've been so frightened. They're such a set of geese--Mrs Courthope, and the butler, and all of them! Don't leave me, please."
"I maun gang and see what's amiss, my leddy," answered Malcolm; "but ye can come wi' me gien ye like. What's fa'en, div ye think?"
"Nobody knows. It fell with a noise like thunder, and shook the whole house."
"It's far ower dark to see onything frae the ootside," rejoined Malcolm, "at least afore the mune's up. It's as dark's pick. But I can sune saitisfee mysel' whether the deil 's i' the hoose or no."
He took a candle from the hall table, and went up the square staircase, followed by Florimel.
"What w'y is 't, my leddy, 'at the hoose is no lockit up, an' ilka body i' their beds?" he asked.
"My father is coming home tonight. Didn't you know? But I should have thought a storm like this enough to account for people not being in bed!"
"It's a fearfu' nicht for him to be sae far frae his! Whaur's he comin' frae! Ye never speyk to me noo, my leddy, an' naebody tell't me."
"He was to come from Fochabers tonight. Stoat took the bay mare to meet him yesterday."
"He wad never start in sic a win'! It's fit to blaw the saiddle aff o' the mear's back."
"He may have started before it came on to blow like this," said Lady Florimel.
Malcolm liked the suggestion the less because of its probability, believing, in that case, he should have arrived long ago. But he took care not to increase Florimel's alarm.
By this time Malcolm knew the whole of the accessible inside of the roof well--better far than any one else about the house. From one part to another, over the whole of it, he now led Lady Florimel. In the big shadowed glimmer of his one candle, all parts of the garret seemed to him frowning with knitted brows over resentful memories--as if the phantom forms of all the past joys and self renewing sorrows, all the sins and wrongs, all the disappointments and failures of the house, had floated up, generation after generation, into that abode of helpless brooding, and there hung hovering above the fast fleeting life below, which now, in its turn, was ever sending up like fumes from heart and brain, to crowd the dim, dreary, larva haunted, dream wallowing chaos of half obliterated thought and feeling. To Florimel it looked a dread waste, a region deserted and forgotten, mysterious with far reaching nooks of darkness, and now awful with the wind raving and howling over slates and leads so close to them on all sides,--as if a flying army of demons were tearing at the roof to get in and find covert from pursuit.
At length they approached Malcolm's own quarters, where they would have to pass the very door of the wizard's chamber to reach a short ladder-like stair that led up into the midst of naked rafters, when, coming upon a small storm window near the end of a long passage, Lady Florimel stopped and peeped out.
"The moon is rising," she said, and stood looking.
Malcolm glanced over her shoulder. Eastward a dim light shone up from behind the crest of a low hill. Great part of the sky was clear, but huge masses of broken cloud went sweeping across the heavens. The wind had moderated.
"Aren't we somewhere near your friend the wizard?" said Lady Florimel, with a slight tremble in the tone of mockery with which she spoke.
Malcolm answered as if he were not quite certain.
"Isn't your own room somewhere hereabouts?" asked the girl sharply.
"We'll jist gang till ae ither queer place," observed Malcolm, pretending not to have heard her, "and gien the rufe be a' richt there, I s' no bather my heid mair aboot it till the mornin'. It's but a feow steps farther, an' syne a bit stair."
A fit of her not unusual obstinacy had however seized Lady Florimel.
"I won't move a step," she said, "until you have told me where the wizard's chamber is."
"Ahint ye, my leddy, gien ye wull hae 't," answered Malcolm, not unwilling to punish her a little; "--jist at the far en' o' the transe there."
In fact the window in which she stood, lighted the whole length of the passage from which it opened.
Even as he spoke, there sounded somewhere as it were the slam of a heavy iron door, the echoes of which seemed to go searching into every cranny of the multitudinous garrets. Florimel gave a shriek, and laying hold of Malcolm, clung to him in terror. A sympathetic tremor, set in motion by her cry, went vibrating through the fisherman's powerful frame, and, almost involuntarily, he clasped her close. With wide eyes they stood staring down the long passage, of which, by the poor light they carried, they could not see a quarter of the length. Presently they heard a soft footfall along its floor, drawing slowly nearer through the darkness; and slowly out of the darkness grew the figure of a man, huge and dim, clad in a long flowing garment, and coming straight on to where they stood. They clung yet closer together. The apparition came within three yards of them, and then they recognized Lord Lossie in his dressing gown.
They started asunder. Florimel flew to her father, and Malcolm stood, expecting the last stroke of his evil fortune. The marquis looked pale, stern, and agitated. Instead of kissing his daughter on the forehead as was his custom, he put her from him with one expanded palm, but the next moment drew her to his side. Then approaching Malcolm, he lighted at his the candle he carried, which a draught had extinguished on the way.
"Go to your room, MacPhail," he said, and turned from him, his arm still round Lady Florimel.
They walked a way together down the long passage, vaguely visible in flickering fits. All at once their light vanished, and with it Malcolm's eyes seemed to have left him. But a merry laugh, the silvery thread in which was certainly Florimel's, reached his ears, and brought him to himself. _