She was full decked, with a dainty little cabin.
Her planks were almost white—there was
not a board in her off which one might not, as the
Partan expanded the common phrase, “ait his parritch,
an’ never fin’ a mote in ’s mou’.”
Her cordage was all so clean, her standing rigging
so taut, everything so shipshape, that Malcolm was
in raptures. If the burn had only been navigable
so that he might have towed the graceful creature
home and laid her up under the very walls of the House!
It would have perfected the place in his eyes.
He made her snug for the night, and went to report
her arrival.
Great was Lady Florimel’s jubilation. She
would have set out on a “coasting voyage,”
as she called it, the very next day, but her father
listened to Malcolm.
“Ye see, my lord,” said Malcolm, “I
maun ken a’ aboot her afore I daur tak ye oot
in her. An’ I canna unnertak’ to manage
her my lane. Ye maun jist gie me anither man
wi’ me.”
“Get one,” said the marquis.
Early in the morning, therefore, Malcolm went to Scaurnose,
and found Blue Peter amongst his nets. He could
spare a day or two, and would join him. They
returned together, got the cutter into the offing,
and, with a westerly breeze, tried her every way.
She answered her helm with readiness, rose as light
as a bird, made a good board, and seemed every way
a safe boat.
“She’s the bonniest craft ever lainched!”
said Malcolm, ending a description of her behaviour
and qualities rather too circumstantial for his master
to follow.
They were to make their first trip the next morning—eastward,
if the wind should hold, landing at a certain ancient
ruin on the coast, two or three miles from Portlossie.
Lady Florimel’s fancy was so full of the expected
pleasure, that she woke soon after dawn. She
rose and anxiously drew aside a curtain of her window.
The day was one of God’s odes written for men.
Would that the days of our human autumn were as calmly
grand, as gorgeously hopeful as the days that lead
the aging year down to the grave of winter! If
our white hairs were sunlit from behind like those
radiance bordered clouds; if our air were as pure as
this when it must be as cold; if the falling at last
of longest cherished hopes did but, like that of the
forest leaves, let in more of the sky, more of the
infinite possibilities of the region of truth which
is the matrix of fact; we should go marching down the
hill of life like a battered but still bannered army
on its way home. But alas! how often we rot,
instead of march, towards the grave! “If
he be not rotten before he die,” said Hamlet’s
absolute grave digger.—If the year was
dying around Lady Florimel, as she looked, like a
deathless sun from a window of the skies, it was dying
at least with dignity.
The sun was still revelling in the gift of himself.
A thin blue mist went up to greet him, like the first
of the smoke from the altars of the morning.
The fields lay yellow below; the rich colours of decay
hung heavy on the woods, and seemed to clothe them
as with the trappings of a majestic sorrow; but the
spider webs sparkled with dew, and the gossamer films
floated thick in the level sunbeams. It was a
great time for the spiders, those visible Deaths of
the insect race.
