CHAPTER XII.

WHAT MAUD LINDSAY TAUGHT ME

It was not long before I had made my case plain to Maud Lindsay. All my infancy and childhood she had been my companion. In the time of De Retz, she and I had been shut up in the White Tower together, and at the last had paced hand in hand the dread approaches to the Iron Altar--as has already been told in certain chronicles entitled _The Black Douglas_.

So to me Maud was no new friend--no confidante of a day.

Thrieve itself had grown a new place--what with the merry chink of children’s voices coming up from the green, and the rotund twins trying on pieces of armour in the great hall of the guard amid the riotous laughters of the men-at-arms.

More than once Sholto had declared that this Thrieve was no proper nursery for women and babes. He had even desired, during the presence of the Avondale Douglases and myself at the castle, to take Maud away to the Three Thorns, where my Cousin Earl William had caused them to repair the old cottage for his father, Malise M‘Kim, loving the situation better than the forty-shilling lands of Mollance with the grand new house thereon, which had been forced upon the armourer for his great and notable services to the family of Douglas.

So we two, just Maud and I, went out on the balcony of wood which opens upon the castle wall near the top, and makes a promenade about all four sides. But that was our favourite gossiping place which looked towards the south. William was, indeed, determined to new-make the higher battlements in stone, as well as the wooden galleries. But in the meantime we loved the old brown logs, rough-hewn and weather-stained, with the marks of the knives of three or four generations of Douglases, making transfixed hearts thereon, together with the initials of their sweethearts--the which, indeed, with the flourishing of their own signature, was mostly all the learning they ever had. For though we have had both abbots and bishops to our name, the Douglases of the Black could not be called a book-learned race.

As we sat, Maud worked busily, turning her head from side to side like a painter in a church, to observe the effect of her dainty confectionery of lace and fine linen. As for me, I looked over the river to the green Kelton fields and the swelling ridges of Arieland. All was sweet and covered with a great peace: or so, at least, it seemed to me at that time.

Who could have supposed that the slender figure yonder, clad in black, taking quick, alert strides, with Sholto and Murdoch the master-builder a little behind--now down by the great moat, pointing with ready index-finger wherever masonry was to be strengthened or water deepened--now erect as a spear against the sky-line of the topmost tower--everywhere planning, deciding, registering, commanding--was to bring the Douglas line to its highest glory, and by his death to sink it into utter extinction?

It was long before either Maud or I spoke. I think both of us were somewhat unwilling to begin. I had left her a girl, she was now a matron. She had last seen me a child. Now below us, there was my husband of a month hence, walking about--and--never giving me so much as a thought or a glance.

It was Maud who spoke first.

“Tell me,” she said softly, “are you happy?”

I think that I laughed. But somehow it was not a laugh that sounded as it ought.

“Happy?” I cried. “That is a strange word, Maud Lindsay, to be speaking to me! Should not the bride of Will of Avondale and Douglas be happy? Have I not looked forward to this ever since I could remember?”

Maud shook her head, very slowly and soberly.

“I wish I could be sure, little maid,” she said--it was her old pet name for me. “I am not fond of these agreements between high contracting parties. They are likely to leave love out of account.”

“But you knew your Sholto a long time?” I said sharply.

Maud laughed a laugh--a laugh--oh, quite different from mine. Even I could hear that.

“Ah, but,” she said, “that was because I never really made up my mind to marry Sholto till--till--well, I stood with him before the priest.”

“Fykes and fiddlesticks!” I cried; “how dare you tell me lies, Maud? I was, indeed, a child at the time; but I have a memory! So have a care! I know that you had your mind made up long before. Do you remember that night?”

She put her hand over my mouth and looked over her shoulder, smiling.

“Hush!” she said, “I give in; but, all the same, the thing is true enough. What I _had_ made up my mind about was only that Sholto should not marry anyone but me!”

And as she said this she laughed again, a mellow, retrospective laugh, which somehow thrilled me between the heart and the throat, and then presently left me saddened with the sense of lacking I knew not what.

Why should this woman, the wife of a blacksmith’s son, be so much happier than I could ever be? It came nigh to making me desperate.

It was not Sholto I wanted--of course not. It was not Laurence. It was not even James Douglas. It was no man in particular. God knows--_none_. It was only the need to be loved, as women are loved for whom there is but one man in the world.

I wept quietly. Maud let me alone. She was a wise woman. She let me alone to ease myself with tears--many tears.

“Why is it,” I wailed, unable long to keep silence, “why do others have so much without knowing or caring, while I so little--worse than nothing, indeed?”

Then all at once Maud let the rich frillings and dentellations she had been putting together fall to the ground. She slipped them off her knee as if they had been horse-cloths, and came directly and kneeled down beside me, with her arms close held about me.

At first I pushed her away. I could be a pig when I chose--but not for long.

“You are like the rest,” I said; “you come to tell me how noble a man, how worthy, how truly like Solomon, King of the Jews, arrayed in all his glory, is my Lord William of Douglas!”

It was pettish, I know--like a child--like me. But Maud never so much as moved her finger.

“Little one,” she said gently, “when you were used to quarrel with your puppet, did I pick it up after you had thrown it on the ground and set about trying to convince you that there was never such a beautiful puppet in the world, so delightful a plaything? No, I knew better. I put it away till you yourself asked for it!”

Somehow the idea made me laugh.

“Oh, our Will a plaything! Look at him, Maud! I pray you look at him!”

And still laughing, I leaned over the wooden balcony. There he was--his head a-poke before him--eager as a sleuth-hound on the scent--the master-builder following meekly after with Sholto, the last not too much engaged to wave his hand to us, and, seeing Maud’s face, to throw us a kiss also balconywards over his shoulder.

“Look at my plaything,” I laughed, “my plaything that I have thrown down--only that I have never taken it up! Ask for it, indeed! Not if you locked it away for a thousand years! There he is--my father-confessor in armour--my black crow in nesting-time--see him gathering the sticks--see--see!”

And, indeed, at that moment William Douglas did stop and pick a piece of stick which a careless carpenter had left behind. With great solemnity, all absent of mind as if he had been thinking of something else, he went to the wood-pile and dropped it upon a heap of kindling chips.

“Ho, by St. Bride, saved!” I cried. “Now he will sleep sound. There is the thousandth part of a farthing saved! Ah, good crow--valiant crow--crow of parts! Who would not wed a crow like that? Ah, ah!”

And I laughed till I sobbed, and then sobbed till I laughed, stretching ever farther over the balcony to see what he would do next, and pointing at him through my streaming tears, as I cried, helplessly, “Oh, stop me, stop me, stop me, Maud! Why don’t you stop me? I shall die! He is so like a--no, I will not say it. Yes, I will stop. Do not be angry with me, Maud. I think I am not myself--overwrought! But, oh”--

And then I went back again into the same helpless laughter.

Then Maud, taking upon her the old authority, which when a child I had never thought of disputing, lifted me in her strong, soft, motherly arms, and compelled me to lie down in her chamber. It was nearer than my own, though smaller. The window looked to the north, and from it you could see the green double bosoms of Cairnsmore and Carsphairn.

Here she put me to bed like an infant, locking the door inside against intrusion, bathing my forehead, pressing her cheek against mine and murmuring tenderly, just as she used to do in the White Tower of Machecoul when the nights were hot and the Terror near at hand.

And, being quite tired out, I lay still, with Maud Lindsay’s arm about my neck, and her fingers gently moving among my hair, till with a sense of utter lassitude, and a certain slow-coming peace of well-being, I fell on sleep, long and dulcet. It was good, somehow, for anyone to be with Maud. That was all. No wonder her babes adored her. At that moment I felt like one of her children myself, though by the calendar she was not more than ten years older than I.

I awoke. The world slowly re-formed itself, emerging hazily, not all at once--rather a bit here and a bit there. I noted, as in a dream, the oak of a child’s crib, like that in which I had slept long ago when my brothers were alive and my mother gave me up to Maud Lindsay to take care of--pretty Maud from the north, that flouted all the men near and far who came a-wooing her.

Then my eye fell upon a wreath of withered flowers, then came the keen blue edge of a sword, the crossbars of a helmet, and, strange to be seen, thrown over it some of that dainty dentelling of white, fine as mist, which Maud had been making. There was also the scent of a woman’s chamber--not the cell of a _pensionnaire_ at a convent, not even the great bald spaces of the guest-chambers of Cour Cheverney, with the red creepers flowering about the windows and the Judas tree budding purple all along its branches in the court beneath.

It was different, somehow. All smelt of home, yet was not, somehow. These things were Sholto’s and Maud’s--together. Together! Would it ever come that I would see William Douglas’s helm and gloves thrown thus on a chair with _my_ kirtlings of silk and lace _dentelles_ over it? No--a thousand times no! He could never be to me--_this!_ Anything else--a friend, a companion, a guide, and adviser--yes! But this--No!

I raised myself, affrighted like one who starts from an ill dream and desires to sleep no more lest it should return. The thing had never come to me thus clearly. But I saw now what I had never realised before--the terrifying Solitude, the appalling Nearness of Two--a man and a woman left alone for life--by the mumble of a priest, by the will of a dead man, or by the land-hunger, the power-thirst of one who cared for women only as so many steps on the ladder of his greatness.

“No--no--no!”

I called the words out, like one starting back from deadliest terror. And as I said the words I felt about me loving arms, drawing me, heard a voice sweet and soothing as the hum of bees in clover on June meadow-lands.

“Margaret, Margaret--do not fear! I am with you!” It was the voice of Maud Lindsay. “Be my own little lass, my treasure, my bairn as of old. It shall not come to you--that which fears you. The back is made for the burden; and, as I love you (yes--the first-born of my bairns no better!), you shall not marry a man whom you do not love.”

“But I must--I must”--I again speaking (I mind it well) in a panting whisper strange even to myself, as I sat up in bed--“it is fixed for a month hence. Did you ever know of William of Douglas and Avondale going back on his word? Besides, has he not sent Laurence for the pope’s permission--and blessing? Figure it to yourself, Maud--the Holy Father’s _blessing!_ He should have said his curse--the Greater Anathema the Bald Cat used to prate about at the convent!”

But still Maud kept her arm about me, sisterly and motherly at one and the same time.

“Listen,” she said. “I am but poor Maud Lindsay, who married the man she loved, Sholto, the blacksmith’s son of Thrieve: I, who might have married my cousin, Lord John, the Tiger Crawford, and, perhaps, healed a breach into which brave men have poured their blood. I married Sholto because I wished it so. Well, hear me out. I am not Will of Douglas and Avondale, but I have a will of my own. I have never wished greatly for anything in my life, never _prayed_ for anything greatly (which is just the better way of wishing for it) without getting it at last. Perhaps not exactly as I figured it to myself, when I prayed and when I wished, but in a wiser and wholesomer way! Yes, always!”

I formed my lips to answer.

“Nay--hush--not yet. Do not speak. Let me say my say out! So, trust me when I say that happiness will come for you--or, at least, the happiness of making the man you love less sad. That is the pleasure most often granted to women in place of their own proper joy. Perhaps it will come to you thus. But that it will come, be sure--be very sure--I, Maud Lindsay tell you! Now, little one, have I said one word you thought I would say, given you any old-wife, good-my-gossip counsels, preached the orthodox submission of maids? ‘Love will come,’ they say, ‘come with the children’! Bah! I know different. Nothing tries the love of a woman for a man more than the re-repetition of the Eden curse; but where love is to begin with--small as the mustard seed that grows into the greatest of all herbs, as Father Ignace preached about once on Pasque Sunday--all things are possible. Bide, my bairn. I know William of Douglas far better than you. I know him. There is a shell over his heart, hard like the nether millstone; but the kernel within is true, and great--and unselfish!”

“Nay,” I cried, grasping her by the wrist, “the other qualities perhaps, but not that--not unselfish!”

“_And_ unselfish!” Maud repeated with emphasis, and, kissing me, left the room.