CHAPTER XVII.

THE COTTAGE BY THE THREE THORNS

It was with some anticipation, but still more, I think, with that exultation which comes from swift movement in the open air, that Maud and I started to ride the half-league which separated us from the cottage of the Three Thorns.

It was mid-August--that is to say, high summer in Scotland, for the beauties of this our dour land develop late. But there were now crops along the river bank, other than the daisies pied and winking gowans which had greeted me on my return from France, corn still green in the hollows, but thinning out and yellowing on the brae-faces, besides a hundred flowers all along the way we went. I had quite forgot the country names of most of them, though I could have given the most part of them in the French tongue readily enough.

There was a scent of delightful warmth, rare in Scotland, over everything. The morning mist, which heat draws from the ground in the moist south-west, had not yet wholly lifted. Except to children and lovers, the way through the marshes was always a little tedious, because of the need of searching out the best path across the peaty flowes, and of keeping to those bare patches of soil on which only tufts of heather and bent grew.

Then we mounted the hill, from which we could see the three famous thorn trees of Carlinwark, beside which Malise M‘Kim had dwelt all his life. He had, it is true, a much finer house at Mollance, a league and a half up the valley; but nothing contented the old man truly but the armourer’s house by the waterside, with the Isle of Firs in front of the door, immediately under the blue barn roof of Screel, and the sound of the water crisping and whispering on the pebbles along the shores of Carlinwark.

Malise M‘Kim, chief armourer-smith to the Douglases, met us by the door, his vast leathern apron about his middle. He showed himself a gnarled and knotted trunk of a man, with a face, in a general way, soberish, but upon occasion gravely mirthful as well, and even in repose showing a capacity for humour essentially Scottish.

He tossed his bonnet on the ground and stood before us bareheaded.

“That is where I should be too, if I had not grown so thick-about, my lady countess,” he cried. “Bide ye still where ye are, Sholto’s Maud! First I bode to rax doon my bonny! Sit your fit there!”

He thrust out a hand towards me, a hand broad as an oaken trencher from the servants’ hall. I put one foot into it, and with a touch of my hand, as it were on a mountain side, upon the shoulder of the giant, I found myself on the ground.

He laughed a low, satisfied, grumbling laugh.

“Ay,” he chuckled, “the Wee Yin hasna forgot the airt o’t! She has minded auld Malise, that stood afar aff and saw her married to his maister yester morn. But, wae’s me! They tell me the Earl William rade awa’ that verra nicht to Douglas Castle and left ye bird-alane! It canna be true!”

“Hush, father,” said Maud hastily, “come and help me down. There were tidings of great danger in the Upper Wards--that Crichton and Livingston were even then besetting Douglas Castle with a great army! You speak of things concerning which you have no knowledge!”

For so it was ever Maud Lindsay’s way to manage and mistress everyone. As many as possible she caused to do her will by simple ordinance, as she did with Sholto, or by alternate _manège_ and the curb rein, as she had been wont to do with her lovers of old--now, however, mostly by wheedling and cajolery, or if no better might be, by the argument of tears, or that soft inveiglement and the attractive forces of those little kindnesses which touch and win a woman most from one of her own sex.

Old Malise lifted his daughter down, lightly and easily as he had done for me--though Maud had begun to pay the penalty of comfort and a home, with maternity and the happy care of children. In brief, she was no longer willow slender or quite feather-weight.

Now to me it was greatly pleasant to see again this grizzled giant, whom I but dimly remembered, his arms knotted and massy as the branches of an oak, smiling upon us--ready at once to give us of his best, or to lay down his life for either of us if need were.

“But why,” said I, “have we not to seek you at your new abode? Is not the Mollance a pleasant place to dwell in? If not, then we must e’en seek you another. Do you not know that the Douglas will be beholden to none, not even to an old friend?”

“Pleesant to the e’e, and heartsome--ay,” said the old armourer, “but the Mollance will never be hame to me. Some o’ thae daftlike young folk o’ mine will doubtless set up their canopied bedposts there. But there shall be nae hame for the auld smith but aneath the Three Thorns where he was born. There shall he leeve and there (God sainin’ him) will he dee; and when they carry him awa’, feet foremost, he will be buried oot yonder on the Kelton brae-face, wi’ the glint o’ rain and sunshine comin’ and gangin’, as if the Head Smith o’ a’ were hard at it, blawin’ the bellows o’ the wunds athort the lowin’ coals o’ the cloods o’ even. Hoots--there I am at it again, bletherin’ fule words aboot the cloods.”

He turned and, with a perfect whirlwind of voice, cried aloud, “_Guidwife, are ye there?_”

“Here I am, Laird M‘Kim,” replied another voice of almost equal volume from behind the peat-stack, “but I wad hae ye ken that golderin’ like a Bull o’ Bashan is in no way to caa’ for the leddy o’ the Mollance. Do ye think that I, Dame Barbara o’ that ilk, am but a tinkler’s wife for a’ the warld to scraich at?”

“And ’deed what better are ye?” said her husband, subduing his voice to shorter range, “ye are just puir auld Babby Kim, the smith’s wife at the Three Thorns! And,” suddenly sending his voice outward in a gust of sound, “_gin ye dinna come oot frae ahint that peat-stack this minute--faith, I’se come an’ fetch ye like a clockin’ hen!_”

“The poo’er is no’ gien ye by the Almichty, Laird M‘Kim,” said the voice, “‘Brawny’ though they caa’ ye! Ye mind what happened to that black scoondrel Ham for makkin’ a shame an’ a lauchin’-stock o’ his faither, and faith, it wad be waur for you to do the like to your douce marriet wife! Gang your ways intil the hoose an’ bid Magdalen bring me my paduasoy goon and my white mutch. For I am juist no’ fit to be seen, as weel ye ken, me bein’ a laird’s wife, an’ forbye, the mither o’ a beltit knicht an’ an abbot o’ Sweetheart Abbey. A bonny-like thing for a graund body like me to be catchit in an auld slip-body and clogs, feedin’ the pigs! Gang your ways and find Magdalen--hear ye me, Malise M‘Kim?”

“But, guidwife,” said Malise, with something like a wink across at us, “I’m some feared that Magdalen is gane to the far park yont the hill, to gather the white rose and the reid! Ye wull hae to come out as ye are, guidwife, I’m thinkin’!”

“Deil o’ that I’ll do, Laird M‘Kim!” cried the lady, while we waited smiling. I had signalled to Maud to be still, for, indeed, the words, and the very lilting strain of the voice when in pretended anger, recalled old things to me. For this same Dame Barbara had been my foster-nurse, even as she had been that of my two dead brothers, whom the Crichton slew so cruelly at Edinburgh. “Deil o’ that,” she repeated; “gang yoursel’, my man, to the armoire, an’ tak’ oot the paduasoy and the white mutch that hangs on the peg, a’ goffered an’ daintied! And mind ye that your hands are well washen, ye great muckle, hulkin’ blackamoor that ye are! For gin ye fyle a single kep-string or bowed puff, I’se”--

“Mother,” said Maud Lindsay suddenly, “let me go if you need suchlike, but do not forget that you are keeping the Countess of Douglas waiting!”

“The Coontess o’ Dooglas? Wha’s she?” (There was a sudden change in the voice.) “No’ my wee Margaret, her that lay at my breests, that was unto me as my ain--ay, an’ maybes mair--the last left o’ the bonny three that were bane o’ my bane an flesh o’ my flesh, as say the Scriptures!”

“Even so, Dame Barbara!” I cried. “If you will not come to see your foster-bairn, faith, blithely will I kilt my coats, and help you to feed the pigs--as I have done before, dear mother of mine, many and many a time!”

There reached us a sound of feet heavily plashing, excited breathings that came short and fast, then finally from behind the peat-stacks Dame Barbara appeared with her sonsy arms outspread to enfold me. A blue linen gown was broadly belted about that part of her body which it was a misuse of words to call her waist. A kilted skirt of rough frieze descended a little, a very little, below her knees, showing rig-and-furrow stockings of blue wool, and sturdy feet thrust into the huge wooden shoes, called “clogs”--a sort of left-handed cousin, I take it, of the _sabot_ of Touraine.

“Oh, my ain wee bairnie,” she cried, “I wad hae kenned ye afar aff. There’s nane like ye! But I canna touch ye the noo. I declare I am a fair disgrace to be seen--me that micht hae been sittin’ in the bonny hoose o’ Mollance”--

“Ay,” said her husband, “twiddlin’ your thumbs roond yin anither like a mill-wheel in a spate an’ wishin’ that ye had the Carlinwark pigs to feed!”

“Ye needna think, muckle sumph that ye are,” retorted Dame Barbara, “that because ye canna pit by a day withoot the smell o’ apron leather, an’ the foost o’ het pleuch-irons fizzlin’ in the cauldron, that me, who is ain sister to a Provost o’ Dumfries, has nae mair respectable thochts in my heid!”

But having once felt my arms about her, the good Dame of Mollance easily forgat the imperfections of her attire, and alternately wept and laughed over me, now holding me at arm’s length to admire, and anon reflecting with some breadth upon the supposed ill-conduct of my husband in leaving me alone so soon after our marriage.

“Body an’ breath o’ haly Patrick,” she cried, “it wasna dune that gate in my young time--by gentle nor yet by simple. But wae’s me, wae’s me, the times are sair changed--and wi’ them the folk. There’s even oor wee bit Magdalen, and--Guid forgi’e me, nae sweeter or bonnier maid doffs kirtle at bedtime atween here and John-o’-Groats--though I say it that shouldna--but even she will gang aff by her lane instead o’ dancin’ on the green wi’ them that are o’ her age. Ye will find her ower yonder i’ the wild wood or up amang the heather, far far yont, sittin’ on a hassock o’ bent and listenin’ to the laverocks i’ the lift, as if she had never heard them afore in a’ her life. Ay, ay, puir lassie, an’ sae your groom’s gane an’ left ye, wae’s me, wae’s me!”

This was the beginning of our daily pilgrimages to see Malise M‘Kim and his wife, and (but that came later) Magdalen, their daughter, and their other five sons, Corra, Dun, Herries, Roger, and Malise the Younger. All these, however, were older than their

[Illustration: HER FATHER, WHO MELTED TO NONE ELSE, FOLLOWED HER WITH HIS EYES AS SHE WENT ABOUT THE HOUSE.]

sole sister Magdalen, who, as her mother said, “had arrivit untimely, the child o’ oor auld age--the ithers being a’ as close on yin anither’s tails as a string o’ deuks gaun to the mill-pond.” So, as was natural, this one little daughter, the pearl of price, now in her fifteenth year, had drawn to her great store of the love of her parents, and found herself petted and worshipped as a divinity even by her brothers.

Nothing she could do was wrong. So Magdalen M‘Kim grew up encircled by love, and, what is more and other, by the unfailing expression of love. Her father, who melted to none else, followed her with his eyes as she went about the house. One day (so he said to himself) Magdalen would marry a laird’s son and be the lady of Mollance. For, as for the others, man and boy, they could fend for themselves as their father and mother had done.

But on this first occasion of our going we saw nothing of the maid, the fame of whose beauty, however, had already carried far across the countryside.

Yet I held it strange that as Maud and I overtopped the little ridge behind the Three Thorns, which is called the Hill of Carlinwark, I seemed to see all suddenly against the sunset the shape of a knight in armour mounted on a noble horse. He was stooping from his saddle to kiss a maiden’s hand, which she had rendered to him as if against her will. Both stood out black against the redness of the west, and in a moment they were gone, or at least hidden by a little rising of the ground as we rode on. The sight took my breath away. I must have dreamed it, I thought, for indeed at the time my head was full of visions and hopes and fears. So I said nothing to my companion.

And Maud, full of her babes, paid no attention, or at least she spoke never a word of the event if she saw aught. But to me it seemed that the knight with the black plume and the great square shoulders was of the build, make, and carriage of James Douglas.

Only in my heart I said, “Tush, Margaret, you get your mind too full of James Douglas these days. This must be ended, and suddenly! I will no more on’t!”

All the same, I thought on the vision afterwards, when I ought to have been asleep in my naked bed.