CHAPTER XV.

THE GREAT HEART OF A MAN

For a moment we stood there gazing at each other--thus. William Douglas was bareheaded, looking, as I remember, in his dress of black, simple as any squire. Yet in spite of all, James Douglas did not let me go. Courage of certain kinds he did not lack.

As for me, how I summoned myself to meet the ordeal I cannot now recall. I can remember only that through the first numbing chill of feeling that all life was overturned and changed, there shot a kind of thankfulness that it had come--_before_, and not after.

William Douglas might do with me what he listed. But at least he would know. There was comfort in that. And so for the breathing of twenty breaths, slowly respired, we stood facing one another without moving.

Then Will lifted his hand from his sword-hilt and pointed to the entrance of the bower.

“Go!” he commanded in a hard, bitter voice, not loud, but low and penetrating.

And James, with his arm still firm about my waist, never blenched or even quivered.

“No, brother Will,” he answered, “I will not go and leave you with--Margaret!”

“Margaret is my promised wife of to-morrow,” said William Douglas. “I have had little private converse with her. I desire a word or two here and now! Go!”

“I stay to defend the woman I love, and the woman who loves me!” said James, looking his brother in the eye. Douglas to Douglas--they stood--and a Douglas between! I could not help wondering what would come out of that--yes, even at the moment I wondered. But then I could never have devised anything so marvellous as has indeed come to us three.

“I do not lift my hand upon a woman,” said Will; “you may leave Margaret Douglas with me and safely. You have said your say. I have heard. Now, I have somewhat to add. Go and help them with the banquet tent yonder. I shall be with you later!”

And his eyes, till now steady and black as night, snapped upon his brother.

Still James hesitated; I think it was in his mind to poniard his rival. For with his free arm I could feel him grip nervously at the handle of his dagger--his mind evidently divided within him, wavering this way and that.

“Go,” said William, without raising his voice, “I am the Douglas!”

The loyalty to the head of his house, which James had sucked in with his mother’s milk, had the mastery. He went out, clicking back the dagger into its sheath and never once looking behind him.

So in these unimaginable circumstances I, Margaret Douglas, was left alone with the man who was to be my husband on the morrow. I stood wavering, about midway betwixt crying out nervously and fainting away. Had I not been a girl and innocent, I should assuredly have done the latter. For to faint in a man’s arms takes the edge off his anger, no matter how bitter it may be--even as a sleeping-draught of the apothecary dulls the ill dreams of the night.

But this I did not know, and so sate me down of my own accord on the seat of rough boards which James had put up in the bower. I only leaned back and breathed deeply with my eyes shut, for a period which seemed to be measured by years and ages. And all the while William Douglas kept his black eyes steadily on me, so that I could feel them even through my closed lids.

All at once a swift and strange anger against him surged up in my heart.

After all, had he the right? Marriage, indeed, he had spoken to me of. Once he had said that he “loved” me. But how? So that I could almost have laughed at the word. No, he would not terrify me. I was a Douglas as well as he. Therefore I rose--a little unsteadily, I fear, in spite of all my courage, and, walking to the river-edge, I dipped my kerchief in the clear brown Dee Water.

With this I dabbled my face well, and let it drip, cooling the palms of my hands. I was determined that Will, whatever he might do or say to me, should not have the advantage because of any girlish weakness on my part.

But I own, in spite of my preparedness, that what he did say to me took away my breath. That he should have slain me with his hand or sent me to a convent for my life’s term would have surprised me less. Douglases had done as much before to their women folk, even after they had been wedded a long time.

“I have spoken with Mistress Maud Lindsay,” he said. “She it was who bade me come to this place--_because I would not believe!_”

Then I sprang to my feet. Hot anger ran white as molten metal from my brain to my heart, and from my heart to my finger-tips.

“Maud--my Maud Lindsay, whom I trusted--believed my only friend--to betray me!” I cried.

“Nay,” he said in the same voice, low, even, and a little chill, “not your only friend, nor yet a traitress. Your best friend--_save, perhaps, one!_”

I do not know that for a long minute my brain took any meaning from these words. They might have been Latin, like the monk’s songs, for all they conveyed to me. But slowly there dawned the hope, inexpressible, unbelievable, that, knowing all, William Douglas was not angry with me.

I asked him in as many words. But as I drew nearer, I saw him shrink away a little--unconsciously, as I now know, but as I then thought because James had so recently held me in his arms.

“Angry with you, child?” he said, his voice vibrating strangely; “nay; but my eyes are opened.”

“It was nothing,” I said, trying to speak lightly. “James was but bidding me farewell. He teased and craked like a scarecrow in the cornfields till I had perforce to let him kiss me. I did wrong.”

William Douglas waved his hand, as if all that I spoke of was an afterthought, a nothing, even as I had said.

“My eyes were opened wide before ever I came hither,” he said. “Hitherto I have walked in darkness; but Maud Lindsay has made me see!”

I waited for that which should come next.

“Child,” he went on again, “I wonder if you will understand? I fear not. The matter is too great for you. But at first, when she spoke, I would not believe that you could think of another. Love, betrothals, marriage, the hope of children born to the house of Douglas: these had always appeared to my mind as so many links in a chain, a chain which was to bind you and me for always. To me, you have been all my life the Little Maid whom I used to see on my visits to Thrieve. But I forgat (having, indeed, many things upon my mind) that now you had grown into a woman; that you needed other love, other care; that if I did not speak--well, there were others less tied of tongue!”

I did not speak, for, indeed, he seemed to be speaking as much to himself as to me. Presently, I think, his mood changed. He sat down near me, and let his words fall with a commoner and more friendly accent.

“‘Your fault,’ said Maud Lindsay, ‘all your own fault, William Douglas!’ I agree! Only, you see, I did not know. But it is a crime for a man not to know. A man is maimed who goes through life thus, with eyes that tell him nothing of women, scarce even the colour of their hair, or whether the blush on their cheek is for his own incoming or for that of another man!”

“William,” I said, “I promised that I would be a true and good wife to you. I have continued to intend no less. Is that not enough for you and me? We need not expect great things of each other!”

He smiled very sadly.

“No,” he said. “I am well served. In my folly I thought it was enough to tell a girl that I loved her, knowing that one day she was to be my wife, and that then I could tell her better. Listen, child--what I say is strange. I love you. I love you as James yonder will never love you--no, nor any woman. He hath it not in him. Nevertheless, I know--I have seen--I have heard--the thing Maud Lindsay told me, that your love is not for me! Not now, my child--not ten years hence--not for ever!”

I laid my hand on his, and I think that I must have sobbed aloud. “I do love you, Cousin Will--as--_as much as I can_.” These were the words I said.

He touched the back of my hand gently. Then, stooping, he kissed it, laying it back again on my lap. But there was no caressing in his touch, only somewhat of that sad tenderness with which we resign our best loved dead to the white swathings and the hollow falling of the clods.

“Yes,” he said, “that is it in a word. You have said it--‘as well as you can’--so you would love your husband, It is a true word. But I saw your eyes as you lay in my brother’s arms. That is another sort of love--something I shall never know--shut away from me--lost for ever. And by my own fault. I have chosen the worser part, of that I do not doubt. But such as it is--’tis too late to go back upon it now!”

I had no word to say. For though there was no right tenderness for William Douglas in my heart--not, at least, such as he spake of--I could not love him as my husband--no, not if he had been the angel Gabriel, with all the virtues of heaven thick upon him. I am of the earth, earthy, and it was the chief of my good qualities that I was ever candid enough to acknowledge it.

“Listen, child,” he said again, and as he spoke all his great, clean, over-burdened soul seemed to unroll itself before my vision, “to-morrow I will wed you before the priest. The wheel of fate cannot go back. So much must be, if all I have striven for--all that your two brothers died for--is not to be lost in the ruin of our house. But I will hold you sacred--yes, even as my sister, even as my mother, until the day of my death. I am a strong man, and able for this thing. Also, William Douglas was not made for a long life. He fights with principalities and powers, and shall die--though in his death (I who speak see it) Scotland shall be new-born. Will you help me in this?”

“I do not wholly understand,” I said, “but at least I will do all you wish, so be that you are not angry with me for--for--caring about James! It is only a little, and I could not help it.”

I think he winced at this.

“Nay,” he said, “you I do not blame at all--and James not greatly. He is as incapable of refraining from the making of love, as I”--

“Of making it!” said I, smiling at my cousin for the first time. “It may not be too late--who knows? You should go to school to James!”

“I have had one lesson,” he answered, not giving me back my smile, yet not rejecting it; “it is enough. For me, I will hold to the word I have spoken. To-morrow is our wedding-day. When we are once married, you and I, I shall order it so that James shall ride off as upon a report of danger to the Upper Ward, and I follow him immediately to Douglas Castle. Meantime, I will leave you here with Maud Lindsay for your guardian. It shall never be said that William Douglas took what was another man’s--that is, with knowledge and intent. As for James, I will speak with him apart. Till we meet at the altar, Margaret, I bid you farewell!”

And as he said, even so he did.