CHAPTER XLVI.

JACK NEVILLE’S ANNE

It was on the third day of the stay of Malise the smith at the house of the Larg of Kenmore that there came a message from the king, at Stirling, commanding with all urgence the armourers presence at Carron straths, where the great new cannons were being made, under Laurence’s care.

This seemed greatly to excite Malise M‘Kim, and with much roughness of speech he bade the messenger begone, lest a worse thing should befall him. But Sholto and Maud, knowing that much depended on the complaisance of the old man, laid it upon him to obey. And I also, following the hint given me by Maud, commanded him to go and do the king’s will.

He took a strange, lingering look at me, as if to make sure that I had spoken in good faith.

“I understand your ladyship,” he said. “Ye shall be richtit. By God’s ain grace ye shall be richtit. Ye shall be avenged for the man ye lost by the bluidy hand o’ the Stewart. Bide ye! bide ye! There shall be news to send! On a day--ay, on a day there shall be news that shall gar the heart o’ ilka Stewart stand still frae Appin to the king’s pailace o’ Stirling!”

So, with no more said, Malise the smith took his mighty piked staff in his hand, and, without so much as a fair-good-day to any in the house, he set his bonnet on his head, and strode away over the moor as he had come, disdaining the help of any four-footed creature; the which was, indeed, as well, for there were no more than a pair of Highland shelties in the stables of the Larg, either of whom had been foundered at the first bog by the weight of the armourer of Carlinwark.

When he was gone, we spoke with more ease of the strange forgetfulness of Malise M‘Kim, and what it boded. For me I saw in it naught but good. He had forgotten Magdalen, James Douglas, and all that had since befallen. He had gotten what many pray for, more than for the forgiving of their sins--that is, Forgetfulness.

But Sholto was not so sure. He foresaw a danger. In time of flood the water will rise behind the dam, and the sluices were shut. The anger was yet hot in his heart. With Maud or with the little children, even with me, it vanished. The old nut-sweet nature came forth and sat in the sun. But with his son, once or twice, a certain dangerous madness, latent and essential, showed itself plainly. Added to this, Sholto perceived a power of concealment altogether unlike the Malise we had known, whose thought was a spoken word, and the word as like as not a blow.

At anyrate we were all greatly relieved when the smith obeyed the king’s mandate and strode away across the heather towards Carron.

Then on the fourth day thereafter came Laurence with news. His father had arrived safely at Carron straths, where the new cannons were in the making. He had looked with his usual contempt at the work which had been done during his absence at the Larg of Kenmore. Without saying a word to any as to his purpose, he had set off again for Stirling. Then, on his return, he declared that in the new task the king had set him, he would have none save his sons to help him, and not even all of these. Laurence (who called himself Stewart) might, he said, go and set up a forge for himself! Likewise Herries, who had in a manner been Laurence’s favourite, might depart with him. There was no room for Stewarts or Gordons in Malise M‘Kim’s forge!

The sudden ill-will with which Malise dismissed Laurence was easily enough understood by us who had seen with pain the old man’s lapses of memory. But it was easy to see that both Laurence and young Herries, who had stood the burden and heat of the day at Thrieve, and especially in the making of Mons Meg, were much discountenanced by the armourer’s treatment of them.

But Laurence, at least, was not long so affected. He had the manifest favour of the king, and for his fidelity and intelligence had been promised the barony of Balveny--on condition that he should choose a wife pleasing the king.

Concerning this Maud in especial loved to tease him, alleging that the king had scores of Highland cousins, great and gaunt as pike staves, all stalled like cows in a byre, and all to be pensioned off with a man apiece and a forfeited forty-merk Douglas holding. And when, for some reason, Laurence grew restive under these words of his good-sister, Sholto, ever kind of heart, would cry from his resting-chair, “Heed her not, Larry! I thought ye had more sense, man! What is it to thee to bear that for an hour, which it hath been my lot to hear ding-donging for years fifteen!”

Then would Maud toss her head and declare that she would go to her own folk, taking the bairns with her. But at this Sholto would only laugh the more and say, “Ay, Maud, will ye so?” As if he knew better--which indeed he did.

And to his brothers Laurence and Herries, Sholto said kindly, “There is little enough for you to get here, lads, on the rough side o’ the Larg o’ Kenmore. These are not the fat lands of the Borel and of Balmaghie. But there are at least twice twenty score o’ black-faced sheep and routh o’ deer on the hills, and as for sport--the wild birds o’ the lochs and the red grouse o’ the heather come clockin’ about the very door!”

So for a time Herries accompanied the Kenmore herds to the hills, helping them to make safe and commodious folds with closures of iron, such as would prevent the wolves and foxes from entering. For it was again the lambing-time, when was need of special care, the flocks being of necessity abroad all through the night watches.

But being thus exiled, Laurence bode for the most part about the house. And it is not strange that, Maud being much taken up with the care of Sholto and with the learning of the bairns, it fell to him once more to be much in my company.

Yet, among other things, I noted a curious shyness in all his intercourse with me, almost something of apology and humility, as if he were conscious of having done me some secret wrong. Though what that could be it was not within my mind’s scope to imagine. At this time also he would call me, “My Lady” and “My Lady Countess,” till I had perforce to laugh at him and tell him that there was no “Lady Countess” under the fell of the Larg--adding that I had now lost my greatness and must be well content to be a sorner on the kindness of my good friends Sholto and Maud. “But,” said I, “if so be that upon occasion you have time to remember an old friend, one of a fallen house--I pray you send us some of the beef and greens from the rich pastures of Balveny to eat with our small ale. For ’tis you, Larry, that are to be the great man now--carrying a king’s name and all the rest of it!” So I continued, vexing him for my pleasure. “And then your learning! Why, Laurence, lad, they will make a fighting archbishop of you! For the vows of holiness, as I read them, though stiff as to the shedding of blood, give a man every liberty to knock out his adversary’s brains!”

“I thank you,” he said softly; “I have left all that behind me for ever!” For some reason he loved not to be reminded of his monkish life.

I can see him yet as he lay outstretched on the heather that day, his eyes downcast, and his whole mien troubled. I knew by instinct that there was something coming--something that he was ashamed to tell me. But I was equally resolved that I would do nothing to aid him, or to make his task easier. It was high on the side of the Larg Fell in a favourite nook of mine. All my life I have loved falls of water--the white foam plunging into the brown deeps of the pools, shaded with the greenest of leaves, whispering and rustling. The love of such-like hath worked into my soul--perhaps because I was born on the wide flats of Dee, which the Douglases chose because they loved not to have aught within sight to overtop their great arrogant selves, an it were not their own castle of Thrieve.

Here, then, in a little linn were a few green birks about a rock on which I could sit quite dry, and yet so near the water that, by holding out my hand, I could feel the spray strike cool upon it, while at my feet there was a smooth of turf for one of the bairns, or, as it might be, Laurence to lie upon. I had chosen it so. A woman who hath been twice wedded, and made as little out of it as I, may surely be permitted to do something for herself ere she begins to grow old.

Laurence might still have been called the Young Man in Black, even as at the taking of Thrieve. And I do think that ever after he conserved, perhaps from his training of ecclesiast, a certain gentle austerity--which to my eyes, at least, appeared very becoming. Slender he was, but strong, a little pale, and with a deep line of thought trenched between his brows. Beside him I felt very ignorant. Yet he would never correct me nor directly counter me in the wildest or most foolish things which I asserted. Only at some future time he would lead the talk to the same subject, and with a certain instinct of nobility which was natural to him, would in a breath lay the whole clear and plain, without in the least appearing to reflect upon my lack of knowledge.

Ah, what a pair of brothers were these two, Sholto and Laurence M‘Kim--if only William and James Douglas had been like them! That is what I was thinking as I sat there, holding out my hand fitfully, and letting the spray of the waterfall drip between my fingers. Between whiles I looked at Laurence. Then suddenly, to hide the sob that rose in my throat, I took a handful of water and cast it laughingly upon him. For of the brothers Sholto was Maud’s from the first, and as to this Laurence--who would claim him? Had I not as mickle right as any?

Then the devil entering into me, I put a question to him, swiftly, without taking time to count the cost, as, indeed, I always did such things.

“Laurence,” said I, “were you ever in love?”

He lifted his head as if to reproach me. Then, thinking better of it, he only shook his head.

“And yet, willy-nilly, you must marry?” I went on to tempt him. “The king has given you Balveny and its barony on such and such conditions. Only I advise you not to marry for love. That is the easiest way to make shipwreck of the king’s favour. Stick to one of Maud’s Highland Stewarts--the king’s kin, with a pedigree as long as her nose, and rank high as her cheek-bones!”

“I shall not marry,” he answered, slowly picking the fronds from a bracken one by one and throwing them into the linn. “I shall not bide longer in Scotland than is necessary! I will e’en go and take service with the King of France. He hath made me advances already, hearing doubtless some bruit of the battering of Thrieve with the great cannon”--

He stopped short, doubtless seeing some pain on my face.

“Leave Scotland,” I cried, “leave me! I had--never--thought--it of--you, Laurence! Though why, I know not. You are free. None can say but you are free to come and go. But--but--then I shall have none to think of me--care for me! I thought you did, Laurence!”

In a moment he had thrown himself again at my feet. He had stood up while I was speaking, as if against his will erected and elated by my words. Now he was kneeling at my knees, his hands clasped as before an altar and all the soul of him in his eyes.

“Margaret,” he said, “do not say that. It is wrong to say that. I love you--God knows--I who have no right to love you! I have loved you ever since I was a lad in the smithy, and saw you over the shoulders of the men-at-arms sitting beside the Queen of Beauty at the great tourney. Yet I who love you thus am as a dog, a mean thing before you. You will spurn me when you know. And justly. I have here with me a letter from your husband in England. I have brought it three times to the Larg. Thrice I have carried it away again. I feared--ah, how I feared--that he summoned you to him in England--_and_--_that you would go!_”

He paused, all shaking with the vehemence of his emotion. His hair clung dankly about his brow.

“God’s grace!” he murmured, “I could not do it. I could not give it. But I am stronger now. There is your letter, Lady Margaret. And try to forgive the man who goes from you wretched and heartbroken. As God is in His heaven, I will aid you to return to your husband. I will make it my sacrifice so to do. Then after that”--

He stopped, with the mere force of putting restraint upon his emotion. For to Laurence M‘Kim these things came hard, being by nature reticent and of few words--that is, in the things nearest his heart, though light enough in other matters.

But I laughed, knowing James Douglas.

“Open and read the letter,” I bade him. “He that was my husband is little likely to send across the Border any such invitation to Margaret Douglas. Open--read! Why, man, wherefore do you shake? Can you not read? Are you not a clerk? Have you forgotten your letters? Open, I say!”

Yet, for all that, he would not. So at the last I snatched the letter from his hand, broke the seal, and bade him read.

I knew James Douglas’s scrawl. He ever wrote as if with the point of his dagger, or, rather, with a wooden skewer picked from a butcher’s stall in the market-place.

Then Laurence read aloud the words which I append hereto.

“Dear Cozin Marget,--I write to tell you that I am marriet to poor Jack Neville’s Anne, she that was Anne Holland. I ken weel that ye will mak no wry nor scurvy faces over this news, but, contrarywise, be heart-glad no longer to be tied to one who is for ever tripping and stumbling towards the left hand.

“Cozin Marget, I wish ye weel. I wad that it had been in my wig-wagging nature to be a better man to you. But now I must e’en do the best I can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne. She is bonnie for a widow woman, and young also--but hath brocht me no portion. If you have aught that you can spare in your stocking-foot, pray remember your loving Cozin James. For in truth I am in hard case for two or three hunder pound. The king hath given me his Order of the Garter for a bit battle I focht for him near to Shrewsbury, and for cutting aff a Welshman’s head. But I had rather he had given me the five hunder rose nobles he promised me than a hale cart-load of Garters.

“But this one I did give to poor Jack Neville’s Anne to bind up her stockings withal. And, indeed, it was from certain giff-gaff and merriment we had between us anent the matter in poor Jack Neville’s sometime rose garden that Anne and I came to be marriet.

“I hope, dear cozin, you will not go into a nunnery. To my mind there is no sense in such places--but instead, I prithee, go find a better man than me! All the same, fair day or foul day, I am resolvit to do the best I can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne.

“Whilk Receive from Your Loving Cozin, “James of Douglas.

“_Above all do not forget the siller._ John Tweedie, a merchant of barkit skins in the Wellgate at Carlisle town, is a safe man to send it by, and kens me weel. If it is a maitter of a thousand merks, so mickle the better.

“_Written from my lodgings in Southwark Borough Town, where Anne and I would do not ill, an it were not for our poverty. Aprile the_ 30_th._”

* * * * * * *

Never did changes more curious come over any man’s face in the same space of time than those which passed over Laurence M‘Kim’s as he stood before me reading and re-reading James Douglas’s letter. I admit that I watched him somedeal mischievously, and at the end I fairly broke into a tempest of laughter.

But Laurence did not laugh. He took the matter with great seriousness, not knowing my husband James as I did, nor comprehending his nature.

“Then you are a free woman!” he said, folding up the letter with an exceeding attention to the folds.

“I am, or I shall be soon!” answered I, without taking my eyes off his face. Then all at once I remembered the phrase in James Douglas’s letter, twice repeated, how he must try now to do his best for poor Jack Neville’s Anne!

At that there came a wicked thought into my head.

“Laurence,” I said, going up to him softly and looking into his eyes, somewhere in the middle way betwixt tears and laughter, “if I ask you a question, will you give me a true answer?”

“That I will!” he said. “What is it?”

“But it is a favour I have to ask!” I continued. “Will you grant it?”

“An it involved the damnation of my soul!” he said, with the same convincing quiet.

“_Then will you, too, do the best you can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne?_”