CHAPTER XXII.

THE DOUGLAS BIDS GOOD-BYE

I looked up and saw Maud stand in the doorway, left open by the tumultuous entrance of my husband. She held back the tapestry with her hand. No Numidian lioness at the entrance of her den, her cublings mouthing behind her, could have appeared more fierce. To look at Maud’s mouth upon ordinary occasions, you would never believe she could have snarled. But she did. I saw her. She stood for a moment without speech while my husband hid his face between his hands. Yet she did not relax or relent. I could not have believed my Maud so impitiable. But I knew afterwards that she was mindful of the time when I had been to her as a babe between her hands, and she was heartsore to see me fallen (as she said) between the stools of men’s love and their lust for power. A motherly woman can never understand (or forgive) that last, save in her own sons. Then it becomes a “proper ambition.” Besides, another woman has to bear the brunt of it--not she.

Thus it was that, in spite of her husband, Maud never truly appreciated William Douglas. But then, too, that was natural enough--her test of all men, gentle and simple, being merely, “Would Sholto have done this? Would Sholto have said that?”

As for me, I said nothing. Truly I did not understand this sudden irruption, or why William Douglas had thus burst in upon our quiet.

But Maud needed no instruction; she was ripe enough and ready enough with her interpretations, and they erred not on the side of charity. Of that small danger where William was concerned.

“There,” she said, waving her hand abroad, with something of her old mocking vixenry, “go--search the castle. It is yours--by marriage. You will not even find my husband here. He is doing your errands at Douglas Castle. So neither one of us has ever a man to defend our repute, or speak a word in our favour. Go search Thrieve from dungeon to battlements if you will! Question the scullions! Send for the pantlers! Mayhap we have your brother hid in the cellarage”--

“Maud,” I said, “be silent, I bid you. You forget to whom you speak!”

But William Douglas waved me with his hand to let her go on.

“She is right. I deserve this and more,” he said, in a broken voice (that ever I should have lived to hear the like from so noble a man!). “But James left me at Edinburgh, riding southward, knowing that I was summoned in haste to meet the king at Stirling. So, the fit being on me, I let the king wait, and followed James. Yes, I followed till I lost him upon the Flowe of Lochenkit. It was just when this accursed storm broke. I saw him before me not half a mile, my brother James or his ghost. Where is he, if not here?”

Maud Lindsay came over to me and laid her hand gently on my arm. “Go up to your chamber, bairnie,” she said; “when right is, and I have spoken my mind, I will come to thee.”

Then to William she said, “This child knows nothing of evil things--scarcely of evil thoughts. Speak the things you have to say to me, and I will tell her that which must be told. Remember, she is a maid, walking in the midst of marvels not half understood. Go, Margaret! I will follow!”

And for a moment I think she thought of me as no more than her own Marcelle--grown a little older, but no whit the wiser, or the twins, Cuthbert and Bride (anything but saints!), or sturdy Ulric, or even little piping David with the castle Bubbly Jock goldering at his tail. At any rate, one she loved was being harassed, and so Maud ruffled her feathers, dropped her wings, and made ready beak and claw. So that woe betide the intruder, be he Earl of Douglas or, as aforesaid, merely the turkey cock from the stables.

What passed at that interview I do not know--that is, not such a version as can be set down in this place. For women talk differently to each other when men are out of hearing, and I suppose it is the same with writing.

But at all events it ended in this, that William would stay at Thrieve only so long as behoved him to change his wet under-garments, and take such refreshment as could be got ready by young cook A’Cormack, the son of our ancient porter of the gatehouse.

“Then,” said Maud, “Earl William will ride on to the Three Thorns, where he has somewhat to say to my father. One or two of the M‘Kim lads will guide him to Sweetheart Abbey. There he will rest what time he may before rendering himself to the king at Stirling. But, before departing, he asks that he may have the honour of bidding you good-bye! You will find him humble and of a good spirit. Certes, I have laboured your ground right faithfully for you. Go now and sow well therein!”

“I think you were overly hard upon him, Maud!” I said. For, indeed, so it had seemed to me.

Maud pouted her lips a little, and set her hands on her thighs with a defiant action she had.

“Is there aught the matter with Sholto?” she said.

“No,” I answered, “but why do you ask that?”

“What I have said to-night to William Douglas is very milk diet to what I have reared Sholto upon!” she answered. “But if you think barley water is better, try it!” The which was very well, but then Maud was like no one else in the world. Though but the wife of the Captain of Thrieve, she moved as a queen among those about her, and the power was given her to sway men and women alike.

So upon this occasion it turned out even as Maud had predicted. William Douglas met me with a chastened humility which set my heart beating with pity for him. I hated to see him brought so low by any woman, even in my own cause.

“Must you go to-night?” I said. “You know the earl’s room is always ready at Thrieve. ’Tis but seldom the sheets have been fresh-laid during these years. Stay to-night! I will serve you with mine own hands!”

But some hidden reason--the instancy of his business, his need to see the king, or that which he had to say to Sholto’s father at the Three Thorns or his brother at Sweetheart, held him firm to his purpose!

“I have asked to bid you farewell, Margaret,” he said, “because I may not have the chance of seeing you again or of saying that which must be said between us before I go hence!”

“Hush, William,” I answered, a little tremulously; “there is a God behind these things. This is not the end between us! You have gone away before, and after this time you will return again!”

“No,” he said, with a kind of smile, curiously memorable and wistful to me, making the heart wae, “not the end. For I leave you as a legacy--the best of my heritage, intact and intangible, to my brother--my brother whom you love!”

He dropped his voice at the last words, not with anger or any appeal for pity, but only with a certain grave wistfulness, like one who, having a great cellar of rare vintages, may not drink of them, being vowed a Nazarene.

“What is this you say, William?” I said, “that you will not come back? You are surely not afraid--you, the greatest man in the kingdom--you, the Earl of Douglas--you, my husband--?”

“Ah!” he said, almost as if he had groaned, “yes--I am your husband--and it is on that account that I am afraid.”

I only looked softly and inquiringly at him, to give him time. For, indeed, after the gloaming on which we sat listening to Sholto and Maud, there was no self-reproach in my mind with regard to William Douglas.

“Yes,” he repeated after me, “I am the greatest man in the kingdom. That is true. But there are many who strive for the second place. The king loves me not. I scorn him. He is but a headstrong boy with the strength of arm wherewith his great-greatest-grandsire killed Comyn. Yet, to be a Bruce, he lacks the head that knew how to win Bannockburn. Notwithstanding, he has resolved to make garden-mould of the Douglases, whereon to grow the maggots of his poor unripe brain!”

“But yet, has he not made you the Governor of Edinburgh and Lieutenant-General of Scotland?”

“Assuredly,” he smiled; “but his favour is more unstable than the swing of the sea among tide-covered rocks--rising and falling, but always deadly.”

“Then why go to Stirling at all?” I asked.

Will drew a paper from his bosom.

“There,” he said, “is a safe-conduct, under the king’s own hand and seal, with the names of all his new councillors attached as witnesses. Will you have it to curl your love-locks withal? Or, perchance, to light the kitchen fire of Thrieve? It is worth no more; no, nor the word of any Stewart! Yet go I must and will, if all that I have done is not to be undone--all the Good to fall back to the Ill, all the ancient ramping misery set its foot again on the poor folk of Scotland--those honest burghers, those hynds of the broad ploughland, those herds of the hills, whose burdens I have lightened. They look to me as their helper, their deliverer. I cannot leave them to perish.”

“_And for me?_” I murmured, questioning him with mine eyes.

Here William Douglas bent gently over toward me, lifted my hand and touched it with his lips, yet all reverently, as one who in church takes holy bread.

“Yes, Margaret, you,” he said; “have I not thought of you? Ever since _that day_ my thoughts of you have been many and sore. I have come to Thrieve but seldom. For in our hearts the tides of life somehow run crossways, as in that Strait of Ireland that looks towards St. Patrick’s Port!

“Yet, all the same, according to my possible, I have loved you, Margaret--yes, and held you sacred. If it be so that I go to my death, being bound by my duty and the name we both bear--think not too unkindly of me. And if it may be, sometimes when you are happiest, stand a moment by his grave and muse of William Douglas. He has not done so ill by you.”

“Dear Will--dear cousin,” I cried, “of course I cannot choose but keep you in my heart. You are the best man in the world. There is no one like you!”

He smiled sadly, and made a little motion with his hands in the French manner as if that mattered little. For which indeed he had some excuse.

“No,” he said, “James was in the right--I wrong. I have not taken the way to get the pleasure of a man. The love of woman is not for me. I might grow old without ever having known it. But I thank God I shall never grow old. I leave to James to enter into that which I have kept for him, and to rejoice in possessing what has never been mine!”

“See, Will,” I said gently, “you are sick, and need rest. Speak no hard things to-night. Think none either of me or of yourself, and by the morning the dark spectres of your fears shall have vanished. What is it that Sir Harry says at mess?--

“‘_Sorrow endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!_’”

“That may be so for you, little one,” he said softly. “God send it! But for the men of the Douglases, they are doomed--even as the Stewarts are doomed, but we of the southern house to better deaths in nobler causes!”

“Do not care for that--rest to-night, dear Will!” I pled with him. Because I had no anger against him on account of his errand, at that time knowing nothing of jealousies or unbeliefs. And besides (in his long absence) I had grown to think seldomer of James.

But William shook his head, smiling, however, to soften his denial.

“I must bear it through alone, little woman,” he said, as if to a child. “You are good to forgive--not to be angry with me,” he continued softly. “What shall be thought of the man who had an orchard enclosed, and hath not eaten the fruit of it--a garden of pleasant fruits, and hath not walked therein? And now--it is too late--it is too late!”

He walked to the door and, holding it open, shouted, “Without there!” and Andro the Penman appeared, prompt at his master’s call.

“Saddle me the grey,” he said sharply, “the Spanish stallion which the Agnew sent me from Lochnaw!”

“My lord, the snow is deepening!” said Andro pleadingly. Will Douglas made the stern little movement with his hand which, with him, signified the finality of his will. Andro bent his head and was going out. He turned, however, at the door.

“At least let me go with you,” he pleaded. “It is a terrible night. I know the ways. There may be unseen foes!”

“The more reason,” answered Will Douglas, “why you should stay and keep the castle where--my--wife--abides alone.”

The Penman went out without another word.

Then William turned to me. For the first time the eyes of the man looked into my soul. Dimly I began to see what I had lost, yet even then my soul within me would not take blame to itself. He had kept his heart from me in a locked coffer. What if, of a truth, it stood open now? But in another moment I knew that, as he had said, it was indeed too late.

I did not any more try to detain him. Yet, for all that, he did not go. He stood, shifting uncertainly from one foot to another, awkward as a village lover at a country dance--he, the master of a kingdom, the Earl of Douglas, the Lord of Galloway--my husband!

Yet even for that my heart leaped within me. For there came over me that mysterious sixth sense that is given to all women, who, from princesses to kitchen-wenches, know when it is in the heart of a man to kiss them. And this man so desired. Only--believe it who can--he knew not how to begin.

So, since I possessed neither his awkwardness nor--his simplicity, presently taking pity upon the man, kissed him of mine own accord. Lightly it was and somewhat laughingly.

That little act seemed to overturn all his calm--to send a turmoil through the strong man’s soul.

“Margaret!” he whispered hoarsely, and then again, “Margaret!”

Whereat, with a sudden anger, half at himself and half perhaps at Fate, he gripped me fiercely in his arms, holding me hard and tight, kissing me the while on hair and brow, on eyes and cheeks. Last of all he kissed me on the lips--once, twice, thrice--and was gone, without word, leaving me alone and dizzy, maintaining myself, one hand on the table of the great hall, as I listened swayingly to the clatter of his way-going.

But I heard nothing. The snow had deadened the hoof-irons of the horse, and only the blast blattered and raved more and more wildly about the towers of Thrieve--now for me grown more desolate than ever.