And truly the matter came about even as James Douglas had said. The pope granted the dispensation for us to be married, backed as the request was by the name of the King of Scots. It was nothing to James that the hand which signed had been dipped in the blood of my first husband. As to the pope in Holy Rome, it came before him with fifty others, doubtless, and was swiftly dismissed.
So we were married, James and I. And for a long month the hills of Balmaghie took on for me a more purple tinge, while above them the sun set in a paradise of gold.
I envied Maud and Sholto no more. Indeed, with a selfishness I marvelled at afterwards, I saw them but little, and the children not at all. For upon James Douglas’s arrival they had been sent to their grandfather’s cottage above the blue island-studded floor of Carlinwark, in which on clear, still days the Three Thorns were mirrored.
For somehow, if Maud had been unfair to William Douglas, she grew tenfold more so to James. And that was a thing unusual in women—who, even when injured by him, were quick to forgive a man so heartsome and of a nature so large and bounteous. Perhaps—it comes to me now as a thing possible—she was jealous, having had my love so long to herself.
Yet, looking back after many years, I cannot deny that in these days James Douglas made me happy. It was not to be for long. It was not perhaps the highest happiness; but—at least it was the happiness I had longed for.
Nevertheless there was trouble in the air, brooding all about us. Thunder muttered far behind the hills. Sheet lightning pulsed along the horizon as silently as a thought crossing the mind of God, and at night the Aurora, with fingers green and red, weirdly grappled the zenith.
Meantime, we loved each other—James and I—or rather not so. For as for me, I was in love with Love himself, a lusty young god I had sighed for long. And James Douglas—he, I judge, loved me as well as I deserved. But, as throughout all his life, he kept most of his affection for his own great, handsome, seldom-serious, often-boisterous self.
Usually there is something of wistful sadness in the disenchantment which comes to a dreamy and sensitive woman, her girlhood nourished on romance and childish dreams, when marriage rudely tears aside the veil, and instead of Cupid is revealed that godship aforetime discreetly draped in the gardens of the ancients.
But so it was not with me. I had that which I desired. If it were true (as men said and women were not slow to whisper) that James Douglas could not long be true to any woman, the sense being awanting in him, at least he right royally entreated them and betrayed them most delicately. No girl could wish a better lover—no woman a more considerate husband. And at that time I thought of nothing save that he had given me back life after long dead years—life and love and observance. Nothing seemed awanting in the man I had chosen.
Nor did we stay long at Thrieve—at least not at a time. As my mood now was, I longed for change. So with a retinue almost more than kingly we two rode forth—northward up the long valley past Grenoch and Ken water to Casphairn and Douglas. But Douglas Castle, so I thought, could never be to me what Thrieve had been. Yet I loved that ancient tower also, as the mother-hold and bees-byke whence the Douglases had buzzed forth over the land—to north, the east and the west, but mainly, be it said, towards the south and my own Galloway, to which I kissed my hand every morning and evening—ay, though my heart had been wae enough to bide there by myself.
Yet now, when I come to think it over, I judge that it was not my love for James which made me so changed a woman, but chiefly my hatred of loneliness. Also (it may be) some little resentment against Laurence M‘Kim that he would not come and bide with me at Thrieve. For I had loved to talk with Larry, and it did me good—wicked one that I was—to think of his pique and bitterness, his fierce, far-wandering days and sleepless nights about the woods of Sweetheart, when he knew me of a reality, me wedded to James Douglas, and that he would never carve out puppets nor set mill-wheels birling for me again till the world’s end.
Yes, it was wicked, that I know; but, all the same, it did me good to think of Laurence’s discomfiture. So much so that once or twice I knew not whether to laugh or to cry—it was so good to think of, and I returned upon the subject so often.
Well, to Douglasdale we went, and to Straven, where James had been born, in the little round tower that overlooks the curve of the Avon water. And I could have wished to have gone on farther to the north—into the highlands of the east and the country of Murray and Ross, which were still Douglas to the core. But always James would not permit, saying (truly enough) that it was very well for Archie and Hugh to peril their lives by passing through Angus country, but that for fair, plump pullets like me—it was better that they should bide near home, where they could fly up to well-kenned “baulks” when Reynard was prowling round.
For that was ever his way of talk, and with such a wealth of love-making expressions, as “For God’s sake, little lass, art not content in the nest that thy puir Jamie’s love makes for thee?” Or there were certain ways of gentle and tender petting of women that he had, touching a ringlet here and pouting up a chin there, holding his head meantime masterfully to the side, and all with such a great big-framed kindliness and lovesomeness shining out of the eyes of him, that, by St. Mary, I wonder there was ever woman born of woman that could resist him!
And he had a philosophy of the thing too, which he would deliver betwixt a kiss and a pat, being ever a great one for the externalities of love—the which, indeed, it is foolish and vain of any woman to despise—at least, in kindness to herself.
“Sparrows,” he would cry out, laughing, “would not let themselves be caught unless you bob them on the tails!”
“Go, throw salt on them!” I corrected; “that is the way the saw runs in Galloway!” And at this he would let out of him a great ran-ta-ra of laughter, patting me on the cheek meantime.
“Sparrows wag their tails in the same fashion all the world over!” he would say. “It is the only true Vulgate!”
But what he meant I do not know. I give it only as his manner of talk. Yet these were none such ill days. I deny it not, when James Douglas for a little time was all the world to me—yea, even that new world the Spanish folk begin to prate of so greatly in these last days.
But even then I knew, somehow, that it could not last. James had gotten far ben with the king, as it seemed, whom he hoped to use for his own purposes. But there were cleverer heads about the council-board of James Stewart than that hard nut of James Douglas’s. Crichton had the brains of a dozen such, and sat silently drinking water while James, his eyes stelled in his head, gulped down the clary-wine with a “Lusty, lively tra-la-la!”
My poor James, he never, I think, meant any great wrong. But he was made rudely, and, finding within himself a particular power, he carried himself like a free man at his trade, which was to be hale-fellow, stand-to-it with all the world, but especially with all the women thereof.
Now there, on the other hand, was Angus, our cousin, the head of the easterly house, called the Red Douglas. He desired to be great with the king, but being a spiritless, unplucked lown, dared not do aught against his name and kin so long as Cousin Will lived. And even now, if James had flown at his throat in the market-place of Edinburgh, or even flashed a bright broadsword before his eyes, that had been the end of the treachery of my Lord of Angus. For he was of the sort of folk who were frighted with the mere waft of James Douglas’s coat-tails, or intimidated with his high, big, sturdy voice, and the burly, touch-me-who-dare swagger of his carriage.
But James would take no trouble about anything.
“Why should I cause my Lord of Angus go change his body linen?” he would cry, in his broad jesting way; “give him instead a bairn’s go-cart and, in hours of ease, a pottle-pot of whey-and-water to suck at. These will fit him better than crossing swords with me!”
But all the while James was idle, the enemies of the Douglas were hard at it making their plans and plotting their conjurations—the new earl meantime riding the country with a gay retinue of knights and gentlemen. Oftentimes would I speak to him about the matter, but he had ever some new turn of speech to take me off.
“They are but poor barren scoundrels,” he would say. “Am I not earl to-day? And even when I was only poor Jamie, the Master of Douglas, could I not undertake to thraw the necks of any score of them? Will did not take the right way with suchlike. He was always for making himself greater than they in the State—lieutenant-general, regent, what not? Now for me, I have my castles, my lands, my wife. I meddle with none—and you will see to it, fearful little one, that none shall meddle with James Douglas, so long as he can cock his bonnet and hold a good lance in rest!”
And as he said this he looked so gallant, so full of the juice and sap of life, so flourishing, so succulent, in the flower of his age and the pith of his manhood, that it seemed as if he could not fail in anything. It was the opposite with Will, who never seemed as if he could do anything great, being simple in dress and appearance—nothing indeed remarkable about him anywhere save the eyes burning dark under the thick-thatched pent of his brows.
And, indeed, in a way it was true. None would have stirred James Douglas, Sunday or week-day, tilt or tourney, at mass, or vespers, or at sermon, had it not been for James Douglas’s own folly, which in the end wrought his destruction.
But so it was written, and his Fate who shall escape! Certainly not James Douglas, for he rushed upon it as a hill torrent seeks the sea.
Now I have said already that after James came to the Thrieve I saw but little of Maud Lindsay, and when I did, it seemed that she looked at me with clouded eye and an averted face.
Yet I could not tell why, unless it was for some reason which concerned the sorrow and pain of Laurence M‘Kim, her husband’s brother. But it was not—being something deeper and less easy to be spoken about, at least at the time.
Now James did never choose to be long away from Thrieve. And this, he said, was for my sake—because it was my castle, and I loved it so much; he, too, loved everything about it. The which complacency I found very good and thoughtful of him. Indeed he was, as it seemed to me, ever most considerate to me and to everyone within the walls of Thrieve, and in all the lands about. So that everyone, gentle and simple, loved him—all, that is, except Maud Lindsay.
Then as a time came when I could no longer ride with him, being feeble and inclined to rest long on the couch of my boudoir, reading, or listening to Maud’s quiet murmur of talk—James, a great, healthsome, hearty man, naturally enough took to hunting, sometimes in company but oftener alone. For when he chased the deer with hounds, he was so splendidly mounted and conned the country so well that it was easy for him to leave his attendants behind. Also, knowing that their master loved to vaunt himself of this afterwards to me and to others (such being his nature), these huntsmen and attendants would let themselves be outstripped, yet not easily, whipping and spurring like men that did their best, yet losing the foremost rider at every stride.
And about the full tide of evening James would enter, covered with the green splashed ooze of the marish places, his horse bemired to the stirrups in the peat bogs, and with such tales of hairbreadth ’scapes to tell that till bedtime was all too short to hear them. That little vixen Maud would rise at the entrance of the hunter to leave us two alone. And then James would tell his tales, and drink and yawn till, if I had not called to him, he would have fallen asleep in his chair where he sat, still nodding and recounting.
All which was natural enough in a man who had been all day among the hills riding as only James Douglas could ride. But though this was my own thought, who had most to do with the matter, I could see well that Sholto loved not such ways. He firmed his mouth, and set himself more tightly to drilling his men, exercising them at archery and pike practice. Or he gat great droves of beasts from the hills of Kells and Minnigaff, both sheep and grosser bestial, and brought them home to Thrieve; then he set to smoking and salting them, as if he had been providing for a siege.
Every morning James Douglas would call to him to come a-hunting on the braes of Balmaghie, as he passed out with the joyous baying of hounds and the blown breath of horns. But Sholto would ever excuse himself, and let the gay train pass him by, their noise returning from far over the still and sleeping waters, till it was dulled and shut off by the heathery knowes and banks of green bracken that circled the isle.
And as for me, loving James as I did, and believing in him, I would lie dreaming of him, wondering where he was, and smiling as I thought how assuredly he was outstripping all his companions, and bringing down a monarch of the hills, some stag of ten or twelve.
Yet I might have known. It was no mighty buck that James departed in pursuit of, kissing his hand to me from the top of the Hiding Hill, but the tenderest doe of all the covert; no wild boar stirred from his lair in the Dee marshes, turning with red eyes and gleaming tushes to do battle for his life; rather he sought to take a poor man’s one ewe lamb, which parted his meal with him, and in the night season lay in his bosom.
It was early borne in upon me that James Douglas would not long make any woman happy—no, nor yet any people over whom he might bear rule. He was that most insidious of self-deceivers, the ill-doer who never means ill to any.
I remember yet the day when the knowledge first came upon me. A great, high gallant day it was in early summer, the white clouds slow-sailing through the azure like galleons freighted from wealthiest Ind. James had, as he told me, gone to hunt certain dangerous wolves which infested the fastnesses of Buchan and the Dungeon of Enoch. He would be away for several days, and I was to rest in peace at Thrieve, awaiting his return.
I did not greatly regret his absence. The castle was so different a place with James for over-lord—so full of the bravery of noise and pageant, of horns blowing, of the filling of bumpers and the crying of healths, that a day or two of the old quiet were to me (at least in my present case) dreamily grateful. So, in fine, my husband kissed me, patted me on the head, pulled an ear, and bade me go lie down and sleep till he should return with a pack of wolf-skins to make a brave bass for the cradle. For such (there is no need to make secrets of the matter) constituted my dearest hope at that time.
I still remember the long-drawn peace of that reprieve—the open windows of the castle, through which came, in puffs and breathings, the warm perfect wind of the summer days. I recall—with the exactness of one who recovers from long illness, and who, content with the surcease of pain, lies lax and faint with every sense rendered more acute—the plunging splash of the cattle wading clumsily in the shallows of the ford, the iterated calling of a cuckoo far away in the woods of Glenlochar, belated and forlorn, and above all the dark flashing of the swifts’ wings athwart the blue oblong of my open window, their screaming stoop and swoop from dizzy heights, two ofttimes clinging together, as if playing at “barley-break” or “pretty pigeon,” the oft-repeated whish they made as they crossed before the sill, like the hissing rending of fine silk, and then, seen, but all unheard, the same black wings half a mile away, beating the air as they went. I took all in with the net precision of the convalescent—sights and sounds and scents coming up keen and eager to my over-excited senses.
It was, as I say, a great drowsy day, already hot and hay-scented by nine in the morning. They were cutting the meadow, I mind, opposite the isle, as well as on the flats of Thrieve, and a fine smell it made in the morning heat.
So I lay long awake, half content with what was, and half a-dream of what was yet to be. The sharp cri-cri of the mower’s sharpening strake on his blade hardly disturbed me. It recalled one of those cicada-crickets of the south, which in harvest used to awake me at Cour Cheverney even before the bell tolled for matins in the July mornings.
Then, half asleep and half awake, I lay in a great and sweet peace. The castle was very silent. Maud had bidden me lie long and take my rest, saying that that morning she would go to the Three Thorns for the children. They were to stay at Thrieve till James returned. Maud loved not to have them where they might hear (especially the twins, Cuthbert and Brice, who loved the stables and armourer’s sheds) an occasional rough-spoken word from some of the company that followed James Douglas. He himself, with all his carelessness, used none such—only great midriff-shaking laughters and oaths by St. Bride and St. Loy, which he had learned in France or elsewhere on his travels.
Well, so at least it was. Finally I began to bestir me, and had the wherewithal to break my fast brought. Then I dozed off again into that sweet warm summer silence, smoothed by the crisp coolness of the linen sheets on the bed, that had been freshly spread. But all suddenly I awoke with a cry. I cannot tell why or how. But I must have been in great terror. It seemed that I stood on the brink of an abyss—deep, deep, so deep and palely blue, all swimming with vapours, but with no bottom. And lo! James came suddenly behind me and pushed me over the edge. So I fell—fell—fell—till with that cry I awoke to find the sun shining outside and the cattle splashing and flicking their tails, yea, even the soft champ, champ of their jaws I could hear as they chewed the cud under the shadow of the castle. All came up, clear and unforgettable, lying so. And this strangest thing of all I remember, that when James pushed me, it was not into the abysses of the air that I fell, but, as it were, into fathomless water. And through the cool, affrighting blue deeps there swam up to me as it had been an angel with the head of Larry M‘Kim, and he said to me, “I have made a new mill-wheel, better than either of the others! Shall we two go and set it a-going?”
And just then I cried out, and so awaked, trembling and in an access of terror and dismay.
Yet all without cause, for there, aloft and already right high, was the summer sun, though it was yet morning. I had not slept long. The castle and island were silent all about; there was no cause or excuse for fear; yet I was in a cold sweat of terror so that my teeth chattered in my head, and that in spite of the warmth of summer.
Somehow Thrieve seemed suddenly accursed. If a volcano vomiting smoke had arisen under the ilex oaks and white lilacs of the southward garden, I had not been surprised; indeed, I would have preferred it to this uncanny silence, which to me somehow grew more and more unbearable as the moments, leaden-winged, went by like a funeral procession.
At last I could bear it no longer. I arose and dressed myself swiftly, as I had always been wont to do. I looked forth. The river went largely past, flowing by without haste or noise, as was its habit. On the other side of the castle the courtyard was quiet. No ring of bit or stirrup iron, not even the hiss of a groom gentling a restive beast—nothing in the world to make afraid. Nevertheless I remained terrified—in a great fear because there was nothing to be afraid of.
I went down the stair into the great hall. Silence and gloom brooded there in Maud’s absence. Only one window was open, and the sunlight fell upon a glove of James’s, cast aside carelessly, or simply not picked up as he went out humming a tune or whistling to his dogs.
Somehow this little thing smote me to the heart. I grew faint and dizzy with looking at it. My heart thrummed in my ears, quick and light, so that through all my body there went an impatient envy to lie down and die—that I might be done with it. But I mastered the feeling, and, going to the cupboard, took down a glass of the strong wine of Malaga, which afforded me some strength in my causeless fear and foolish weakness.
But for all that I could not rest in the castle—no, not for a moment longer. So I went out, and just within the stable precincts I came upon a quartette of grooms, some asleep, and some merely chewing of straws on a bed of fodder. And when they saw me they stood up blinkingly, and, as it seemed, with a sort of dull, loutish resentment, like servitors disturbed at a meal. For me they had noways expected, having kept track only of Sholto and Maud, their accustomed superiors, and of my Lord James, who was to them as a god, and observed as such in his comings and goings, his horse-ridings and tiltings.
It seemed somehow that there was a power compelling me to go and search for Maud and her children. Some disaster had surely overtaken them. It was in vain that Andro the Penman pressed upon me that, Sholto being with them, nothing disastrous could possibly happen. Nevertheless I was far from content. The heart within me fluttered like a shadow in clear water.
So surpassing grew my distress that I bade Andro saddle the white Arab, saying that I would ride by myself. He prayed and besought me to allow him to accompany me. But I refused. Somehow I knew that I must go alone to the Three Thorns that day. It was not a long way. Across by the ford I went, riding easily, because Haifa loved to dabble her four white feet in the cool peaty brown of the shallow rushing water.
Then through the rushes and the reeds, with plenty of brackeny dry places where the rabbits scuffled hastily into the undergrowth; broomy knowes, where all day long one heard the Whit-whit-whee of the stonechat or the Chee-chee-cheee-ic of the ox-eye searching for insects among the fresh fir-cones of the wood edges.
Then splash—splash—splash we went through the marshes, alive with the waxy flowers of the bog-bean, bristling with spiky horse-tails, and having whole fleets of water-lilies orange and water-lilies white afloat on the shallow meres.
Then came the ascent of the little hill of Carlinwark, through the avenues of beeches which temper the summer heats, and even in winter made so gallant a show.
I paused as I came to the summit. I had seen the fair landscape so often that it almost seemed like my home. Down by the willows Laurence and I had launched our first boats, his kilts every whit as short as my skirts. Farther to the left, behind the armourer’s shop (they called it only a “smiddy” then) I had kept watch, throwing a stone far into the water if any intruder seemed likely to disturb Sholto and Maud in the ardencies of their earliest love-makings.
Yonder, where the beeches were tallest and oldest, a fair and gracious lady, the mystic and fated Sybilla, had first appeared to my brother William, presaging the death to which his love for her had ultimately lured him.
The children—yes, there they were! I could see them on the green playing at “My Fair Lady,” just as the bairns of the Three Thorns had done for ages—and do, I daresay, unto this hour.
How glad I was to hear their voices! There could be nothing very far wrong with Maud or Sholto, so long as they were at their dainty bairnly ploys out on that green sward, dandelion-studded and daisy-pied down to the ring of pebbles on which the wavelets beat.
But I listened in vain for that other far-heard, well-kenned sound, the ring of iron on anvil from the forge. The great grimy door stood open. I could see within. But the fire was black out. There was no one of the blithe brothers at the bellows, bare of arm and with cap set rakishly over his left eye, as is the wont of armourers’ ’prentices all the world over. Moreover, I could see nothing of Malise, that mighty smith, his apron (so they said) made of the whole hide of an ox of girth, and his blanched hair spraying over his temples as he tossed his head back to survey the final stages of some new masterpiece.
Then I remarked something. In spite of the ring of the children’s laughter, there lay upon the cottage of the Three Thorns the same uncanny silence as had brooded upon Thrieve. Or, at least, so at the moment it seemed to me.
I went down hastily. Yet none came forth to welcome me, as I tied Haifa to the iron ring let into the gable at the peat-stack end. None ran to offer me a chair when I went within. The family were gathered about the great holystoned houseplace which Dame M‘Kim kept in the fashion of a new pin. White-faced, aghast, terrified into silence, they sat watching Malise, their father, who, his head sunk between his hands, was torn with a grief so terrible, so rending, so inhuman, that there is no word in any language known to me which can describe it.
Nevertheless I went in, and the momentary darkening of the chamber caused by the figure in the doorway warned Malise that some other human being had entered in upon their grief.
He started up, his face dark and swollen with something sadder than anguish and more terrible than rage. I think for a beat of pulses he meant to dash out my brains. But Sholto rose and stood between us.
“Hush, father,” he said; “remember—she does not know! She also is smitten—even as we!”
He added the last words almost in a whisper.
Then as my eye went round the family of Malise the smith, I saw that Magdalen was absent.
And suddenly, in a moment, as the lightning flashes full circle from the east to the west, without further word I understood all.
And I was not mistaken.
Sholto stood with his hand on the old man’s arm. Maud sat still-stricken in the window corner. The younger lads read their father’s face with a kind of awe. Only Sholto was master of himself, and, by consequence, of all within the house. Even his mother had been subdued from her torment of mourning by the young man’s steady quiet.
“What is it? Tell me!” I cried. “Tell me quickly—all that has happened!”
Though indeed, as I have said, I knew before any had time to speak.
Then Maud, seeing it was for the best that Sholto should be left with his father and mother, wordlessly beckoned me to follow her out upon the green. So forth from this dark House of Doom we stepped at once into the great blue sunshiny day, with the whaups and water-birds crying aloft, and the airs blowing brisk and caller from the braes of Cuill and Castle Gower. But what struck me most was the sound of the bairns playing innocently together. They were singing as of yore the refrain—
“What will the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you?
What will the robbers do to you,
My Fair Lady?”
And it was wondrous wae to see the young things thus sporting on the grass, joining hands, advancing and retiring, bowing, and waving hands, according as their dance led them, and yet know that within that house there was not one, old or young, who had not a broken heart.
To escape their importunities Maud and I walked a little apart into the glades of the wood, without looking the one at the other. Then, all suddenly, she spoke.
“The Earl James hath taken away our little Magdalen!”
Yes, I had known it. As I said before, I understood at once, as soon as I had looked at those poor folk gathered in the cottage of the Three Thorns. But to hear it spoken for truth and fact was another matter. The words turned me sick, not perhaps with anger, or even sorrow, as it ought, but first of all, and before I thought of the M‘Kims, with the ignominy of it.
To Maud I made no answer; words failed me. I felt as if I must drop down and die. But to die thus is not given to women when they will, not even when they pray hardest for it. There were the playing babes, there the green lakeside strath, yonder the birds, the red-painted heather, the blue sky: all as it had been. Yet to be shamed every day and all the days, till I died; that was the difference.
God help us all! We are weak creatures. Oftentimes it is the surroundings of misfortune, the pattern of the cup from which we drink, that make the draught most bitter! That another should know, that nature should be so cruelly careless and indifferent—these things pique us with sharper agony than even the friend’s knife in the heart. One is never betrayed but by one’s own, they say; and so I was slain by James—James, who had brought me new life, the very beginnings of life, indeed, after those ten years of slow death at Thrieve, when I was a woman, and did not know it until he showed me. And now, now he had taken the life he gave—taken it, and rendered it vile.
Such a short time ago it seemed since he came riding in that first time with his retinue through the great archway of Thrieve! And yet, walking there by the side of the water, I never once thought of questioning the truth of the accuser’s word. Besides, I had known Maud Lindsay all my life; I had known Sholto; I had known Dame Barbara—Malise; they did not lie.
Yet I made no protestations; scarce had I care or interest sufficient to ask how the thing had become known. But at last I found the words.
“Tell me, Maud,” I said, with that curious chill calm which comes at such times, as if some other than I were speaking, “who hath brought this story to the Three Thorns?”
She took from her pocket a little crumpled scrap of paper. It was written in Magdalen’s hand-of-write. Laurence himself had taught her, and she wrote clearly and like a clerk, forming her letters one by one without running them together as the manner of some is.
“Read it!” she said. “God in His heaven, surely you have the right!”
At first the words refused to form themselves before my eyes. I gat no sort of meaning out of the written characters, but after a while they seemed to swim up to me out of a glancing mist.
“My Father,”—wrote Magdalen M‘Kim,—“This will bring you pain—to you and all, to my mother—but most (and most bitterly I grieve for that) to the gracious lady of Castle Thrieve. But till he came into my life, I had never loved any man. And I stood out long—long against his will—till the thing grew too strong for me. I can do no more. I love the Earl James, as a woman loves a man when she will gladly give her life for him. He is great—I less than nothing. Let him do with me whatsoever he will. Be not sorry overmuch or overlong for the pain I have left behind me. Be sorry rather in that God hath made such a thing as I am desirable in the eyes of any man! But be never sorry for her who, till this day, had the right to sign herself,
“Your Daughter Magdalen,
“Little and Only.”
Slowly the truth entered in—sharp as the knife of a surgeon, or, perchance, more like a probe moved cunningly to find the root of some hidden disease. Through the unchanged brightness of the glad high day came slowly the intolerable certainty that this thing was mine—my shame, my sorrow, my cross that I must carry till I died.
And James had done this to me. Well, even at the first I found the thing not inexplicable—so far, that is, as he was concerned. But Magdalen M‘Kim, the girl who wandered far from her home to be alone with the wild things of the hills and the woods, what had she found in James Douglas? Ah, that question was more difficult; yet for the present it did not greatly concern or even interest me.
“What will they do?” I asked of Maud, as she sat with her face firm, fixed, and pale as wax, looking across the loch to the sapphire ridge of Ben Gairn solid against the southern horizon.
“God help us all, I know not!” she answered; “the M‘Kims have made an oath to find her first and kill the Lord James afterwards—that is, all but Sholto! Malise the smith it was laid it upon the lads. He swears he will hunt the traitor as he hunted De Retz. They have sworn a bond of vengeance, each pricking himself and signing with his blood.”
“But Sholto,” I said, “will he leave me alone in my time of need? Will he hold as naught the love of a lifetime? And you, Maud, what will you do?”
She shook her head, very sadly and slowly. The tears flowed silently down her cheeks. She did not weep. Only when one glanced at her, lo! there was the water running down her face. But not looking closely, one might have noticed nothing.
“Ah, Margaret,” she made answer at last, “that I know not. I am your friend always, but a wife must go with her husband!”
I could not restrain a sharp intake of the breath as she spoke the words. They fell hard on me, remembering those things which I had just listened to. But Maud, for once not wholly enwrapt in her husband and her babes, turned and caught me.
“I meant it not,” she said; “forgive me! But believe me also—Sholto will never be less your friend. I know him. Ten times for one it is I who bid him do this or that. But when there comes a look—a certain look I know well on his face, I am glad—yes, very glad to be silent and obey! Thus it is with women!”
Then I had a kind of access of foolish tears—the first. And perhaps, I have since thought, it was that weeping which saved me.
“Maud,” I cried, “is it not strange that I am like the woman in the Scripture—she who had so many husbands—and he whom she now hath is not her husband?”
“Hush!” commanded Maud; “it is not good that one in grief should speak of such things. The sorrow comes from God!”
“And James Douglas?” I queried; “perhaps he and his sin also come from God?”
But seeing my mood, she would not answer, but held her peace, and that wisely.
“This becomes you not, Margaret,” she said, gently holding me with her strong young arms laid motherly about my shoulders; “you can do nothing here. Get you back to Thrieve. Sholto shall go with you. As soon as may be I will follow with the children. This is to-day no fit place for babes. Come—let me find you Haifa. Nay, do not go in again. The old man is mad. He sees red. There is the lust of blood in his eyes! Hasten!”
And as we went round the little cottage of the Three Thorns there came from the interior, hoarse and terrible to hear, the cursing of the smith—
“Man and boy, threescore years and three have I, Malise M‘Kim, served the Douglases, but I will serve them no more! They have taken all from me that I gave them—all—self and sons and years a-many. One little ewe lamb was for myself. I kept her. She was as the children of Mary the Virgin, as the little ones who scattered the palm branches in the way for Mary’s Son, sweet and lovely and innocent. She was unto me—to me alone. Freely I gave my sons to the Douglas. I gave them to the death. But this white lamb, sole of the fold, born out of her due time, I held nestled safe—as I thought—within these old arms! And now, by the God that put strength in these wrists and anger in this heart, I will hate even as I have loved. Honey is turned to gall! Service to a hunting with dogs! I will bring down this dark house—I will level it with the ground for what it hath wrought—God be my witness!”
At this point I could hear Sholto’s voice say something, but the words I could not hear.
“Come away, Margaret,” said Maud, striving to draw me out of the reach of that terrible malediction; “this is not fit for you to hear!”
“Nay,” I answered, “let me stay. Part is for me, is it not? Am not I a Douglas? Did not you yourself say that a woman must go with her husband?—ah, her husband!”
At this moment I could hear Malise break away from his eldest son with a kind of roar like that of a wild beast.
“No, by Him and His hosts, I will not!” he shouted, in answer to some appeal. “Stand away from me, boy, or you shall die by the hand of the father that begat you! I care not though I have served six Douglases, all of them good men. They are dead, and gone to their own place. But this—this coward—nay, even now I will give him his dues. James of Douglas is no coward with his hands, but only with his heart and with his soul! Yet he—my master—that I thought to serve and to die serving, hath done this shame unto me! Out of the way, boy! I will go to the king—ay, Stewart though he be! I will go to Crichton. I will go to my Lord Angus. He at least is a Douglas, if he hath not the pith of a peeled willow wand. But I swear it, though James Douglas were as strong as Thrieve, and carried in his veins all the blood of all the thirty lords of the Black House, I would bring him down. I would slay him. The curse of Malise the smith be on every Douglas, small and great, that hath in their veins a drop of the blood of Avondale. Nay, you mistake. I said ‘of Avondale.’ The poor Maid of Galloway, little Margaret—no, I do not curse her. She, at least, hath done nothing amiss, and the blow falls heavy also upon her. It was an ill-done thing to fear her, being as she is. But, if I know the Douglas blood—if I know the sister of William and David, who died in Edinburgh, she will hold still to the man who hath done the wrong—because he is her husband, because he also is a Douglas. So shall the curse of Malise also fall slantwise upon her—the curse of the old man left daughterless, the curse of him that had but one ewe lamb, and now—hath her not!”
Sholto had come out, knowing by some instinct the nearness of Maud, or perhaps our need of him.
“For the present I can do nothing with my father,” he said. “It is useless. There is indeed no need for me there. Gladly will I ride with our dear lady, and do you follow after, Maud, my wife!”
So, ever gentle and kind, and of a nature at all times to be depended on, was Sholto M‘Kim—like him there was none among the knights in any hall of king or prince the world over.
So as he and I went gently up the green brae, we could see Maud gathering the babes about her. They came coursing to her knee like greyhounds to the call, leaping upon her, shrieking in their joy. But when we paused at the top, lo! she had gotten them calmed by some grave word. Doubtless they were already making their preparations for returning to Thrieve. A sedate little company they made, walking cottagewards—Maud in the midst, a bairn clinging to either hand, the twins holding her gown, and the tall Marcelle, walking discreet and downcast, a little to one side.
Ah, it would have been easier for Maud—that which I had to endure. She had so much—so many, rather. She was buttressed against fate. These babes were all hers. But I had—what?
It turned me cold to think what.
And there, looking back from the top of the hill, the little white cottage with the flowers showed white as ever in the sun. Who could have guessed that the folk therein, old and young, would never again be glad with the ancient gladness, never loyal with the old loyalty—never the same as the day before, separated for ever from those who had been to them at once masters and friends. Even when Death had set his foot on the anthill, and all these human creatures had been stamped back into clay, the blue above would never again be as innocent and clear, nor the white clouds as pure and glad and billowy as they had been—yesterday! Hardly even then would these human hates and human pains have an end. For what is the hell the priests speak of, save the Evil growing ever more evil, from everlasting to everlasting—even as the good and the godlike and the unselfish shall flourish for aye in the paradise, the Garden Inclosed of God.
* * * * * * *
Of that ride with Sholto I remember scarcely anything. Haifa had been chafing, as was her custom, and when we left the Carlinwark and turned our faces towards the tall tower which was Thrieve, I had a difficulty in holding her in—which perhaps was as good for me as anything else.
“We shall soon be home!” said Sholto, for once making a mistake which a woman would not have made—at least, I know Maud would not.
An éclat of laughter took hold of me—scornful, bitter as one that awakes with the taste of gall in his mouth.
“Home!” I cried; “home! Ah, you have said it, Sholto lad! Yonder is my dear home! I will hasten thither. My husband will be waiting for me!”
It was cruel, too cruel to speak thus. But, before God, I could not help it; and that which followed is my complete excuse. I leave it to women to judge, to men also. Half mad, I set my white Arabian to the gallop, and, nothing loth, he took the fenland and the knowes of heather, the deep matted ditches, and soft peaty common lands in his stride. He dashed through the ford of Dee without waiting for the drawbridge, and I laughed at young A’Cormick, who came to the door of his guard-hut in amaze. Yes, I laughed, and tossed my hand at him mockingly. I was not in my right mind.
Then, as Haifa stopped, all foaming and breathless, at the great gate of Thrieve, I slipped down to the ground in a dead faint. I remember no more; but I know that I lay there till Sholto—who, to keep me in sight, had almost killed his heavier charger in the bogs and marl-pits betwixt Carlinwark and the castle—lifted me up and bore me in. For my poor Haifa—she at least faithful—had stood quite still beside me, doing me no harm, only snuffing, and blowing her white foam upon me in a kind of dumb protest and wonderment.
* * * * * * *
And when I awoke it was as from death. Ah, that I had been indeed dead! All the pleasure I have known since cannot make up for the pain of that moment.
Maud was sitting beside me. The race of the Douglases of the Black was of a truth extinct. But at least I was free from James Douglas. His babe and mine was dead—dead, as if slain by his hand. I read it in Maud’s eyes.
I think I sighed a long sigh, and shut mine eyes again.
“Better so!”
That was the thought which arose within me.
We were still at Thrieve. The woods were yet one manifest emerald. Only the birds began to take up again their later after-summer song. It was a fair place. But—how shall I describe it?—to me there was a veil over everything. Over the river something smoked black like a chimney that will not draw aright. A grey netting of mist was flung over the trees. At times there came a thicker drift of the same slate-coloured reek, as if the pain and the sin went crying up from the ground like the blood of righteous Abel.
Even the splendours of sunset over the purple ridges of Balmaghie and the dewy clearness of sunrise welling up out of the east behind the wood-crests of Carlinwark were tached and bedabbled by that black spume, the breath as of the burning of Babylon the great, mother of abominations.
Only at one spot did the countryside about Thrieve keep its ancient sweetness, and that was up towards the little kirkyard of Balmaghie—outside of which they had buried him, my babe.
There comes a wetness in these old eyes as I write, that was lacking in them forty years ago. Then I could look with scarcely more than a dry, hot twitching of the throat at the place. But now, grown old and once more verging on childhood, the tears come great and salt—though not easily as they used to do at Cour Cheverney, or at Thrieve during those ten years when I fretted waiting for that which was to bring me so much pain when I gat it.
For the rest I can hardly tell the wonderful thoughts that came into my head during these days. I had changed my chamber from the south side, where the black reek seemed to whirl and drift most thickly (though all the time I knew it was only in my head!), to the north, from which, up the splendid pathway of the broad undivided river, glancing crystal-clear, I could see the ridge, behind which was Balmaghie’s little white kirk, with the birds singing in the lilac bushes under which he lay, just outside the wall of consecration (but within God’s heavenly acre), my bairn—the Douglas who had never a name or a title when they laid him in earth.
Then at morn, at the very first breaking of it, green and infinite as if the Dawn of Dawns were indeed come, I was used to rise and look out of that northward window. Yonder, pearl-clear and unsullied amid the green, glowed His grave—yes, His. And I could not help but think of him as like That Other who had his grave in a green garden—the Sinless One who died for the sins of others.
And above, where she sat at her Son’s feet, the Mother Mary was not angry that I thought of this, but smiled and was well pleased. So that for a moment the clouds were rolled aside. The sky glowed white and blue, the Holy Virgin’s colours, and, till the darkness shut down and the eager pain banked up again in my heart, I could even put up a prayer to Mary and her Son.
To God I could not pray. For He, I knew, was going to punish James for his wrong-doing—and in that, though I could not forget, I desired to have no part. It was not that I did not forgive. For myself I did—yes, from the first. But that dear dead babe cried from the ground. And once, in the silence of the night I heard him cry, and I awoke and looked, and lo! to the north, clear and wonderful, a star!
Then I put on my clothes very quietly, and, passing on tiptoe the door where Maud slumbered, tired out with her manifold anxieties, then out by the little private door, I slipped past the sentries like a ghost till on the shingle without I found a skiff moored. I pushed across the black pool, striking the water at random, sometimes with one oar and sometimes with two, but keeping my eyes always on the star. How it shone—large and pure and gracious, like the rising of the harvest moon over the serried sheaves of corn. By and by I came to the land, or rather, it pushed itself softly against the boat. A place deep-hidden among lush meadow grasses it was. Often, and in vain, I have tried to find it since.
Dew-wet above, sponge-soft underneath it must have been, but of that I have no memory. Certain tall marish grasses I remember shaking their heads as I went by. Then came the acrid smell of bog-bean at night, of wet Queen of the Meadow also, which thrust a tassel of blond dripping fur into my face. I gathered my gown and sped northward—mine eyes on the star. I feared—oh, how I feared that it would fade before I gat there—the way was so long!
Yes, I prayed that it might not! For I thought—I seemed to feel that all was in that. If I saw the light when I reached the spot, my babe (whom they had buried unblessed by priestly hand) would see the face of God and lie on the bosom of that Other Mother, whose benediction would not be lacking. Also I thought that James, after God had reckoned with him on earth, might also be forgiven. Perhaps. At least I prayed so.
So I ran on, eager and forgetful of all, save what God was to do for me, and the babe and James—and, yes—for that poor unhappy girl also, that Magdalen, whose beauty had tempted my—no, I could not yet call him that—had tempted James Douglas to his fate! For such are one woman’s best thoughts of another!
Then was strength given me, not of myself, not the strength of my poor limbs, made weak by suffering; but something quite different—out of me, of divine gift, marvellous.
On and on I went, till the marshes gave way to the drier field-pastures with the starting sheep, and then, hedged with thorns and prickles, came little patches of yellowing corn. And once in a hollow I lost the light, and I fell prone on my face. But not till long afterwards did I know myself hurt. For in a moment I was up again and ran on. And lo! the light, as I came nearer, grew more bright; but, as it were, divided and scattered here and there among the gravestones.
And I heard a sound of singing as if a myriad of the heavenly host was chanting a psalm in honour of a little babe. So I ran fast and faster, lest all might vanish like a dream of the night, and be ended like the song of a bird, when, being frighted, it flies from one wood to another far away.
For this reason I grew cautious, as those who see visions must often be. I had heard of the tricks the Little People play. So I went a-tiptoe to the gable-end of the kirk, knowing I could come to no harm there. The kirkyard lay beyond. The kirk itself rose black above, as it seemed, cutting hard against the stars, making a blank in heaven. And over the rigging, lo, a soft gleaming of light from below! All the winds were still. For sure, for very sure, I was to see the angels, and die. What matter? Better so, indeed! Better for me and for the babe.
Secretly I looked, hiding my poor clogged body behind a gravestone. I remember now I was at once chill with cold and burning with fever. My gown clung wet about me. My teeth chattered. Yet for all that my blood ran hot and my heart beat fast. I was to see the angels—perhaps also—perhaps? But no, that could not be, and I did not want it to be. Maud had told me he was dead, and Maud did not lie. But if I could only see the angels blessing him, carrying his soul upwards, my little one whom men held not fit to lie within the hallowed precinct, dying unbaptized—I should be happy. It would be enough.
I looked again. And behold, the little lich-gate of the kirkyard was open! I could see many men in priestly robes come chanting, bearing great candles in their hands. One in the midst, whose apparel was most glorious, bore on his arms something small, wrapped about in white. And as he led the way into the church, priests and holy brethren followed with their tall candles—till they came to a new-made grave dug within the altar rails. And, looking through a little window, I saw how the man in the beautiful raiment, whose face was hidden, knelt with the white bundle in his arms, and how another, more simply dressed in white, with bands of gold and purple over his shoulders, read out of a book. And after a while, even as I looked, the man whose face had been hidden rose up, and lo, it was Laurence!
And I saw him lay the little white, oblong bundle in the grave, and the priest blessed it again, and sprinkled holy water, and scattered earth upon it. And even as he stood there with his hands outspread, something gave way within me, and I rushed through the door and up the aisle till I threw me, as it were, across the very grave wherein he lay—the babe who was now blessed, anointed, and baptized, mayhap against the canons of Holy Church, but of a certainty according to the desires of Him who drew the little children unto Him.
I lay stretched out before the priest wet and shivering, they tell me, though burning hot with fever. And with my mouth to the ground I cried (I have no remembrance of it)—
“Bless me also, O Holy Ones; bless me, and the babe, with his father, and—Yes, I will say it, her who hath taken him from me!”
* * * * * * *
They lifted me up and brought me home, to lie long in the north-looking room betwixt life and death—and of the two infinitely nearer to death—for many weeks.
And Laurence, ere he left the kirkyard, bade all the fathers and brethren keep silence, for if these things were known at Rome every man of them would lose their frocks. “But,” he added, “the God who made a man His vicegerent on the earth be my Court of Appeal whether this night I have done right or no!”
And while they were carrying me home to Thrieve, they intoned very solemnly the Laus Deo and the Gloria. They knew not whether or no I lived, but they knew that here or hence, having seen what I had seen, a great weight would be gone from my soul.
And so, indeed, it was. For when, faint with the hand of Death scarce withdrawn from my heart, I was carried to the southward balcony to look forth, lo! the black reek (which was Sin Unforgiven) had clean gone from off the land.
All was as the soul of my babe, newly washed like my own, my little chrisom, with the holy oil of anointing, though late, still moist upon his brow. So that evil at least had passed away, and for a time my soul had ease.
And as I lay long, holding Maud’s hand, I asked her under my breath by what name they had called him. For a while she did not answer, and then said only, “Laurence thought it wise to call him William—because”—
Then, as she hesitated, I interrupted.
“Do not fear for me,” I cried; “as ever, Laurence did the right. Though I loved him not, William Douglas was my true husband. It is well that the babe who was another’s, dying unspotted by the world, should bear a good man’s name in that nursery where such God’s children are kept and watched and tended! I am glad indeed!”
At that she kissed me and I kissed her—for the first time for long out of love and with a full heart. And from that time forth I think I was to her even as one of her own children.
Long, long it was that I lay tossing in fever or shaking in chill, till one day I came forth feeble and white, the very shadow of myself. And during these weeks and months many things had been happening.
Without, the woodlands of Carlinwark had grown russet. The birches, struck with sudden frost, flamed among them like bale-fires on St. John’s Eve. After that, the trees, the lakeside bushes, and marish greenery had all grown stark and leafless in the grip of the frosts. Then, through the bitter spring winds and the hurl of the March snowstorm, milder days had come again, and these, when they arrived, found me still like a babe under Maud’s hands.
Meantime, of the Douglas, what? Of the fate of our great house, what? James had fled (so they said), and was reputed on English soil. The king had taken certain of his great castles, but on the other hand, Archibald, Hugh, and little John (now little no longer, but a man of his inches) had convened men and taken other fortresses belonging to the king, so that all was a convulsed hither-and-thither within the bounds of Scotland.
This all came to me in bits and snatches as Maud sat by my bedside and I posed her with question upon question. But there were some which she put aside and would give me no answer to—as when I asked where he was, and whether he would ever return to his own again—I meant to Thrieve.
To that she answered nothing, nor would for all my fleeching.
“And Malise and his sons?” I asked.
Again she bowed her head and was silent.
“I understand they are with the king,” I answered. “I do not blame them. But, Maud, why are you here, and why is Sholto not with his father—not with the king—against us?”
She took me in her arms and held me very close, as her wont had been ever since the day I rode Haifa back from the Three Thorns, and that which was to befall, befell.
“Little one,” she said, “now you will know Sholto as I have known him these many years. This was the answer he gave to his father when the old man called him to come out and help break down the Douglases in the name of a brother’s vengeance.
“ ‘My father,’ he answered him, speaking as ever, gently and yet in fear of no man, ‘vengeance shall be done on the head of the transgressor. Go, if you will, and do your part!’
“ ‘That will I,’ cried the smith, ‘and, hear you this, Sholto M‘Kim, if you stay behind, a curse that shall not lift be on your head and on your children’s heads to the third and fourth generation!’
“Then Sholto, my husband, being of his nature noble and strong as a man, and yet gentle as any woman, bowed his head and made him this answer: ‘For myself I take your curse, my father. But as for my little children, that is not in your power to lift or lay. Yet hearken, when I came to Thrieve to put upon me the cap of the earl’s guard, I was but a lad, and there was given to me and to the girl I loved the care of a little maid—even of her who is now Princess of Galloway, and hath twice been Countess of Douglas. That her second husband, James, has done us the bitterest wrong and dishonour is good reason for your fighting against him, but is no reason for my forsaking of my charge—one who hath done no wrong, but rather suffered much and long!’
“ ‘Then, Sholto M‘Kim,’ cried his father, ‘you will not come with me and the lads? You will abide by the Douglas? Quick, make your choice—it is once and for all!’
“ ‘The choice was made from the first, father,’ said Sholto; ‘I can no other. I will not help a murderer like the king even against James Douglas. I will abide by my Lady Margaret, in the place where she abides. I will fight for her to the death!’
“ ‘Know you that the king has proclaimed her also rebel and outlaw?’ cried Malise, yet more bitterly; ‘he has made accursed all of that family. Think of that, Sir Sholto!’
“ ‘I have stood your curse, my father,’ answered Sholto, ‘for the sake of her who was the Little Maid. At the king’s I snap my fingers!’
“ ‘I also had a little maid,’ moaned Malise, the great smith, ‘and as a reward for half a century’s service, my master that was took her from me. Shall I stay and thank him, make brave his breastplate for the tourney, hold his stirrup when he dismounts at Thrieve? By God, not so! My sword to his rather—the sword I made for him I can shatter. The armour I forged I can pierce. Who if not I can search the joints thereof, and drive home the steel to the dividing of soul and marrow?’
“ ‘It is well,’ answered Sholto, ‘well for you—well for the lads! Let the M‘Kims stand together for their sister’s sake’—
“ ‘And will you, who claim to be a knight and a soldier, be found recreant in that day?’ cried the armourer, and it seemed as if indeed he would slay his first-born. (“If he had,” interjected the tale-teller, “he would have had to kill me also.”)
“ ‘I fight not for James, Earl of Douglas, whom, in His good time, God shall judge,’ said Sholto, ‘but for the woman, my lady mistress, who hath none but me to stand by her. Where she abides I will abide. Her cause shall be mine, her quarrel mine so long as I can strike a blow or lift a spear as you my father taught me.’
“ ‘And if he, the evil-doer, returns hither,’ the armourer went on, ‘here to Thrieve, and if (like a woman) she forgive him, where will you stand? Will you fight against your own folk—against me, your father—against these, your brethren?’
“ ‘Ay,’ said Sholto, very gravely, ‘if she, my lady, who hath no other hand to draw sword for her, remains, I too shall remain by her side to the last—I and mine. She has been left by one brother—deceived by another! She shall have at least one friend—nay, Maud’ (here he turned towards me), ‘she shall have two! And if it so come about as you have said,—which God forbid,—in her cause, the cause of the unfriended, I will even fight against you, my father, and against you, the sons of my mother!’
“The old man stood for a while regarding him stonily. Then all swiftly he shot out his huge hairy hand, grimed with a lifetime’s handling of armour-iron. Sholto took it, his face also steady as an anvil.
“It was a great thing, little one, to see two such men front one another, neither yielding a jot. Then Malise spoke.
“ ‘By the Holy name,’ he cried, ‘but you are a man, Sholto! I lift the curse I laid. You are your father’s own son. But mind, if in the shock of battle I meet you face to face, I will strike and spare not—because that you fight for the betrayer’s cause!’
“ ‘I expect no other,’ said Sholto, ‘and though I know the death in it, I would rather take your blow than your curse. I thank you for lifting that.’
“Yet a moment longer father and son stood eye to eye, no feature of either quivering. There was no yielding anywhere. Deep called to deep, and was answered.
“ ‘Till we meet!’ said Malise the smith, suddenly dropping his son’s hand. But Sholto said nothing. For indeed it was noways in his heart to raise a hand against the father who begat him!”
Here it was that, had she been permitted, Maud would have ended her narrative. I clasped and kissed her hand and said, “There is no one like Sholto, Maud—none so brave and loyal and true.”
But she only smiled as who would say, “Of course! It is so written in the Scriptures. The stars have declared it. It is a law of the Mede and of the Persian. I am noways surprised. I have known that and more these many years! How could any think that man born of woman could think or speak or act like my Sholto?”
But I had a question yet to ask which concerned another than Sholto—yet a M‘Kim.
“What of Laurence?” I whispered. For indeed in my dreams I had seen him oftentimes of late, and plucked with him the green birk to wind about my head, and placed therein the red berries of the rowan, and set whole wildernesses a-bickering with water-wheels and the jolly flap of windmill sails.
“What should there be of Laurence?” said Maud, instantly altering her voice to the hollow-sounding and querulous intonation wherewith straightforward women strive to put off a question. But, being also a woman, I detected her in a moment.
“The truth with me, Maud,” I said, “in this as in all else! On whose side stands Laurence in this quarrel?”
“I think,” she answered, not looking at me, “that after the things you were witness of in the kirk-close of Balmaghie, you have no need to ask that question.”
“But just for that reason I do ask it,” I said, pressing her; “tell me, Maud, I beseech you!”
“Certes, Margaret,” she made answer, “for a sick woman you have many askings. I will tell you that which I do know. Laurence has given his adhesion to the pact against James, Earl of Douglas, but he bides at Sweetheart to keep sanctuary for you there in time of need. That done, or out of need, he will shed his monkish robes like the husk of a hazel-nut and fight against his house’s enemy by his father’s side!”
“Then Laurence is against us?” I could not help saying with tears. “I had not thought it of him. Yet now I remember, he never had any true liking for me. He would not even come to Thrieve to see me but once or twice during these long years. If he had cared at all, he would, being so near!”
Then Maud gave me a curious look—long and piercing, as if doubting whether I was not less innocent than my words implied. I understand it all now. I did not then. I had so much else to think of.
“You mistake,” she answered slowly. “Laurence is with you as truly and as fully as Sholto. And for that reason he is against James Douglas, even as his father and his brethren are—of that let there be no doubt!”
“But why—why?” I urged. “Tell me, why is not Laurence even as Sholto? These two have the same reasons for hating my—for hating James Douglas. Stands it not so? If otherwise, surely I ought to be told!”
Again Maud smiled slowly and subtly.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “not the same!”
“What? is not—she as much the sister of Sholto, even as she is of Laurence M‘Kim?”
“Of a certainty,” she said, “but”—
“But what? Speak the truth to me, Maud, I bid you!”
“Well, little one,” said Maud, caressing and quieting me, “do you not understand that Sholto has had me to love and to be loved by any time these fifteen years? As to Laurence—well, it is not the same!”
She paused, and I snatched at her gown, begging and commanding her to go on. But she would not, fearing that she had said too much, or mayhap had overtaxed my strength. Nor could I get another word out of her, though I tried time and again, but only a sleeping draught to compose me, and the quiet of the north-looking room with the curtains drawn all about the bed.
But ere Maud left me to my sleep she murmured in my ear, “Rest and grow strong, little one; there are more who love you to their heart’s last pulse-beat than you wot of. And as for Sholto and this poor Maud Lindsay of yours, they will hold you safe through the Day of Wrath which evil-doing is bringing upon the house of Douglas, or, if God wills it, they will die with you!”
Then, greatly comforted, I scarce know why or how, I slept with Maudie’s hand in mine, and the little Marcelle on guard at the door to see that none approached to disturb me with so much as the ring of a halbert or a hasty footstep on the stone corridor.
For blessed indeed are they on whom God bestows the love of even one friend. And, as for me, had I not two? But I wished—oh, how I wished—I could have said three!