In the enforced quiescence, and under the excitements of pain and fever, Malcolm first became aware how much the idea of Lady Florimel had at length possessed him. But even in his own thought he never once came upon the phrase, in love, as representing his condition in regard of her: he only knew that he worshipped her, and would be overjoyed to die for her. The youth had about as little vanity as could well consist with individual coherence; if he was vain at all, it was neither of his intellectual nor personal endowments, but of the few tunes he could play on his grandfather’s pipes. He could run and swim, rare accomplishments amongst the fishermen, and was said to be the best dancer of them all; but he never thought of such comparison himself. The rescue of Lady Florimel made him very happy: he had been of service to her; but so far was he from cherishing a shadow of presumption, that as he lay there he felt it would be utter content to live serving her for ever, even when he was old and wrinkled and gray like his grandfather: he never dreamed of her growing old and wrinkled and gray.
A single sudden thought sufficed to scatter—not the devotion, but its peace. Of course she would marry some day, and what then? He looked the inevitable in the face; but as he looked, that face grew an ugly one. He broke into a laugh:—his soul had settled like a brooding cloud over the gulf that lay between a fisher-lad and the daughter of a peer! But although he was no coxcomb, neither had fed himself on romances, as Lady Florimel had been doing of late, and although the laugh was quite honestly laughed at himself, it was nevertheless a bitter one. For again came the question:—Why should an absurdity be a possibility? It was absurd, and yet possible: there was the point. In mathematics it was not so: there, of two opposites, to prove one an absurdity, was to prove the other a fact. Neither in metaphysics was it so: there also an impossibility and an absurdity were one and the same thing. But here, in a region of infinitely more import to the human life than an eternity of mathematical truth, there was at least one absurdity which was yet inevitable—an absurdity—yet with a villainous attendance of direst heat, marrow-freezing cold, faintings, and ravings, and demoniacal laughter.
Had it been a purely logical question he was dealing with, he might not have been quite puzzled; but to apply logic here, as he was attempting to do, was like—not like attacking a fortification with a penknife, for a penknife might win its way through the granite ribs of Cronstadt—it was like attacking an eclipse with a broomstick: there was a solution to the difficulty; but as the difficulty itself was deeper than he knew, so the answer to it lay higher than he could reach—was in fact at once grander and finer than he was yet capable of understanding.
His disjointed meditations were interrupted quite by the entrance of the man to whom alone of all men he could at the time have given a hearty welcome. The schoolmaster seated himself by his bedside, and they had a long talk. I had set down this talk, but came to the conclusion I had better not print it: ranging both high and wide, and touching on points of vital importance, it was yet so odd, that it would have been to too many of my readers but a Chimera tumbling in a vacuum—as they will readily allow when I tell them that it started from the question—which had arisen in Malcolm’s mind so long ago, but which he had not hitherto propounded to his friend —as to the consequences of a man’s marrying a mermaid; and that Malcolm, reversing its relations, proposed next, the consequences of a man’s being in love with a ghost or an angel.
“I’m dreidfu’ tired o’ lyin’ here i’ my bed,” said Malcolm at length when, neither desiring to carry the conversation further, a pause had intervened. “I dinna ken what I want. Whiles I think its the sun, whiles the win’, and whiles the watter. But I canna rist. Haena ye a bit ballant ye could say till me, Mr Graham? There’s naething wad quaiet me like a ballant.”
The schoolmaster thought for a few minutes, and then said,—
“I’ll give you one of my own, if you like, Malcolm. I made it some twenty or thirty years ago.”
“That wad be a trate, sir,” returned Malcolm; and the master, with perfect rhythm, and a modulation amounting almost to melody, repeated the following verses:—
The water ran doon frae the heich hope-heid, (head of the valley)
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin;
It wimpled, an’ waggled, an’ sang a screed
O’ nonsense, an’ wadna blin, (cease)
Wi’ its Rin, burnie, rin.
Frae the hert o’ the warl’, wi’ a swirl an’ a sway,
An’ a Rin, burnie, rin,
That water lap clear frae the dark till the day,
An’ singin’ awa’ did spin,
Wi’ its Rin, burnie, rin.
Ae wee bit mile frae the heich hope-heid,
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin,
’Mang her yows an’ her lambs the herd-lassie stude,
An’ she loot a tear fa’ in,
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin.
Frae the hert o’ the maiden that tear-drap rase,
Wi’ a Rin, burnie rin;
Wearily clim’in’ up narrow ways,
There was but a drap to fa’ in,
Sae slow did that burnie rin.
Twa wee bit miles frae the heich hope-heid,
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin,
Doon creepit a cowerin’ streakie o’ reid,
An’ meltit awa’ within,
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin.
Frae the hert o’ a youth cam the tricklin’ reid,
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin;
It ran an’ ran till it left him deid,
An’ syne it dried up i’ the win’,
An’ that burnie nae mair did rin.
Whan the wimplin’ burn that frae three herts gaed
Wi’ a Rin, burnie, rin,
Cam to the lip o’ the sea sae braid,
It curled an’ grued wi’ pain o’ sin—
But it took that burnie in.
“It’s a bonny, bonny sang,” said Malcolm; “but I canna say I a’thegither like it.”