CHAPTER XXV.

JAMES DOUGLAS, BENEDICT

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.

[Illustration: HE GAT GREAT DROVES OF BEASTS FROM THE HILLS OF KELLS AND MINNIGAFF, BOTH SHEEP AND GROSSER BESTIAL, AND BROUGHT THEM HOME TO THRIEVE.]