CHAPTER VII.

A YOUNG MAID’S LOVERS

Well, at any rate, that was over. I knew what I had to expect. William had said that he loved me. It was possible. Nevertheless, the signs were lacking--all, at least, that I cared about.

Similarly, it is said to rain sometimes, about once in seven years, in that desert where (travellers say) the pyramids of Egypt look out across a world of sand. But--for me, I prefer a somewhat more human climate. I was fated to marry my Cousin Will. He was fated to regenerate Scotland, or die in the attempt. Well, so be it! To Egypt I would go. But that would not hinder me from yearning all the same for a land where the gentle rain and the humane dew kept green at once the herb and the heart of woman.

In the meantime I was glad to keep out of William’s way. A lifetime of the Prophet Ezekiel must have been trying to any woman, and surely every allowance is to be made for the imperfections of his wife. Will saw visions and dreamed dreams, but--I never came into them. I was not even a pawn in the game, though my principality of Galloway was pushed this way and that upon the board. It was hard to bear, and as often as I could I escaped to the bench under the Judas tree--or, better still, to the green bank above the running brook which I had wasted on William, and to which he never returned.

I think I liked the hours best when Laurence made mill-wheels with a knife, and the pair of us stole off a-tiptoe to set them running in the little stream which turned aside towards the Closson, stealing away from the ken of ungentle men, even as we from wars and rumours of war.

Then I was truly happy--happier, indeed, than I was with James, who constantly made me uneasy with his reckless ways--making love, as it were, almost under the very eyes of his brother, in the belief that, as he said, “If you want our Will to notice anything, you must call him to a halt with a naked sword at his breast, and then say, ‘My lord, dinner waits!’”

But as for me, I had my idea that William Douglas saw more than our feather-headed Jamie gave him credit for.

So as I say, I was happier with Laurence. Then it was that I became again a little girl as when I used to cry for Maud Lindsay to play with me. Only she never would bide long enough, but would be for ever running up to the knowe-top to spy out for Sholto or some other young man. Nevertheless, I had a great yearning to see her again, and bade Laurence tell me all that he knew about her. Which, indeed, was little more than that they all dwelt at Thrieve, where Sholto was captain of the guard, and, as ever, the earl’s right-hand man. He did not even know the names of Maud’s five children--but thought that three were girls and the rest boys--or else the other way about.

Now, by St. Jack of Dover, is there a woman in the world that would have been in the same uncertainty? Ay, would she not have known them, each one by headmark, their names and ages and dispositions? But men are like that all the world over. It is part of the burden laid on them when they went forth of that gate before which the sword of fire waves every way.

Laurence used to take off his monastic habit at the entrance of the glade, and in his laced black shoes and hosen, his silken pantaloons to the knee, and tight-fitting blouse buttoned to the neck, he looked (in spite of his abbatical dignity) scarce older than the page-boy who played impish tricks about the Mains of Thrieve, and was whipped for it by Dominie Gilston, my brother’s house-chaplain--the same who afterwards married Mary the cook, and now keeps a change-house and place of entertainment for travellers in the market-square of Dumfries.

Then he would tell me tales of the adventures he had in France, when Maud Lindsay and I were stolen away by the thrice-accursed De Retz, how Sholto, his father, and my Lord James had gone to seek for me, because Will could not be spared out of Scotland, which at the time was all in an uproar after the murder of my two brothers, William and David, in the castle of Edinburgh.

He told me, too, of the Lady Sybilla, whose beauty had led my brother to his doom. She had been sorry, he said, when it was too late, and she herself had been made to experience a far deeper and more abiding woe in being yet alive somewhere in this same land of France.

“Ah, that I could meet her!” I cried, clenching my hand. “Would I not set a knife in her heart, the traitress and murderess!”

At which Larry shook his head and said gently, “Margaret, it is not possible for any human being to judge another, least of all a woman a woman. She was sorely used, poor thing, and it will hurt none if it please God to be good to her in the days to come! May not you also do likewise without any great hurt?”

For there was about Laurence M‘Kim in these days a sweet and pitiful boyishness, and that in spite of his honours more than semi-ecclesiastic. At first I thought that his dissatisfaction with the position was assumed, and upon occasion would venture to rally him upon it.

“You are no right priest,” I said, to try him, “but only a _tulchan_ abbot, to draw tithe milk for us Douglases--a lay prior! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why, man, you should join the king’s bodyguard, and I warrant that in a year you would be an officer; or, better still, our William hath great projects on hand, and will need good men. Come back with us to Thrieve. After James and Sholto, I warrant you there would be no knight like you in all the kingdom!”

“No?” he queried, pleased with my saying that; then, with a quick look, “I thank you, mistress. At least, I came out of the fight the other day without any dishonour--though, as for me, I gat neither kiss nor Christian goose!”

“You were not at the tourneying?” I cried in astonishment, for indeed the idea had never crossed my mind. He smiled softly.

“I wore the Douglas Heart, for my heart is Douglas,” he said, “but with the Sieur Paul’s Bar Sinister, to show that I had no right to it. But it is a secret which I trust only to you. For, as most men think, it is noways seemly that an abbot of Dulce Cor should ride a tourney in a borrowed coat.”

And with that he would fall to the whittling of his windmills and watermills again, cutting them out with a knife as daintily as cabinet work, or the China art of inlay. But, in spite of this, there was a curious constraint upon us--all the time that we were not playing like two children with puppets and fal-lals. The which was the more remarkable that often then we would talk of the most serious subjects, yet always freely and without reserve.

For instance, Larry would tell me, going on all the time with his enginery, how Chancellor Crichton was the worst and falsest man in all the world, and how, from being a small country laird, without power and without apparent parts, he had raised himself to be the richest and most influential man in Scotland.

“But the Earl William?” I queried, surprised. “What of him?”

Laurence nodded, a little sadly as I thought.

“Yes,” he answered, “I have not forgotten. There is no one like him. But he goes to work too straightforwardly to take a serpent in his grasp. A Douglas of the Black is no match for a Crichton, unless he first catch the serpent between the prongs of a forked stick, and then grind his head under heel! If William Douglas were to take my advice, he would gather together all the south, besiege Crichton the Fox in his own castle, having taken him and it, hang him high over the topmost battlement, and set the place on fire. It were a fine counter roast to the Black Dinner of Edinburgh!”

I could not but laugh.

“Certes, that is very well said for a man of peace, Laurence,” I cried, teasing him. “Assuredly if that was the way you spoke to the pope in Rome, it is a great marvel that His Holiness did not make you a cardinal!”

But he gave little heed to my words, thinking solely of the terrible days when my two brothers were put down before all Scotland.

“Ah,” he said, “you were then too young to remember. But we--we that were of the Douglases, who saw them ride gaily through that gate, with the Black Bull already killed for their funeral feast, we have neither forgotten nor forgiven--be we knight or knave, cottar or churchman, abbot or archer!”

“No,” said I, “forgotten I have not--no, nor ever will! But you think there is danger that Will, my cousin, may tread the same road. Why, then, do you not warn him?”

“Warn Will of Avondale!” He laughed a little bitterly. “As well warn the tide-race in the narrows of Solway! When William Douglas is set on a thing, he will turn neither for flood nor fire--nor for God nor man nor devil!”

“Could a woman turn him, think you?” I said, more for the sake of saying something than because I meant aught of serious import. Yet he took the question mighty soberly.

An expression of the most tender sympathy and gentleness came over all his face--sweet and gracious, and yet somehow very pitiful.

“I fear for you, little one!” he said, as if half to himself. “Yes, I fear greatly.”

And I suppose that I ought to have been angry with him to address me thus. But it was with him as with Jamie, though in another way. Simply I could not be angry with him. The thing was not in my heart.

Yet it was all different. For Laurence never meant but to be the best and the dearest of comrades. But James--well, ever since I knew him, James could not help making love to mistress or maid. He must fulfil his _métier_, which was that of cadet of a great house. And to tell the truth, the thing was no trouble to him--so far, at least, as I was concerned.

Ah, if men would only permit women to be the simple comrades to them that they wish to be, how easy and how wholesome the world would become!

Also, saith the Wise Man over my shoulder, how short-lived! But of that I did not consider then.

All the same, there are few things dearer to the heart of a woman than the love, simple and inexigent as the budding of a flower, which grows up in the heart of a boy, or of one who will all his life remain a boy. Of which last was Laurence M‘Kim. For Larry, older than I in years, yet never reached his majority, though I have seen the white hair fall thick upon his shoulders, and but for a pair of pruning shears he might have been able to tuck his beard into his girdle.

[Illustration: THERE WAS A CURIOUS CONSTRAINT UPON US--ALL THE TIME THAT WE WERE NOT PLAYING LIKE TWO CHILDREN WITH PUPPETS AND FAL-LALS.]

So I leave it to any who have such memories, to bethink them whether sometimes the heart within--or what part soever a woman is able to call up, to the soul that dwells behind dimmed eyes and wrinkled skin, the very touch of lips velvet-soft and rose-sweet, the thrill of beloved voices long lost to the outward ear, the swift welcoming smile upon faces unseen for thirty years--does not linger upon such days in the greenwood, tuned to the ripple of waters and the hum of bees, when by my side wandered young Laurence who loved me (albeit a clerk) with the purest and most unselfish love which man gives to woman. Yes, I will say it, it _is_ the best and purest, that which seeks not its own. But, in all fairness let this be added--it is seldom the kind of love which pleases a woman best or moves her most.

When he had fitted his last cog and pinion, it was wonderful to note how Larry would leap up and cry, “It is done! Let us go together and see it grind the corn!”

And so, hand in hand, we would depart, and (by the love wherewith I have loved those dearest to me, I swear it!) never once did he even press my hand, though possibly in my excitement I may have pressed his. I do not know. At any rate, there were elements of pleasure about us somewhere, invisible, like the fairies about a spring.

We would run, I say, to the little stream, and, choosing a place where the trickle descended easily but not too forcefully, we would arrange the uprights, and set the mill-wheel a-going. Sometimes, also, Larry would carve most cunningly contrived little buckets out of hard wood, the which he fastened to a wheel, while he showed me how to direct a little stream along a banked-up canal so that it would run freely, and make what he called an “overshot” wheel. This, he said, was the best sort, and saved a great deal of water; but as the water was not ours, at any rate, and there was plenty of it, I did not see the mighty saving.

It was pretty to watch him hastening this way and that, getting his hose wet, his curling hair all of a tangle, his eyes bright, and his cheeks red as those of any young maid waiting at the trysting-tree.

I could not help saying to him, though perhaps I ought not, “Larry, you are certainly a most distracting boy. ’Tis a world’s pity you are a monk!”

“I am no monk,” he cried indignantly. “If I were a monk, would I be playing here with a madcap girl?”

“I do not know,” I answered him; “there are other and worse things that you might do. And as to being a madcap girl, _I_ never was a holy abbot with a cure of souls, with carp and trout, dace and jack, all in mew for Sunday’s dinner! Nor yet did _I_ ever put on another man’s coat and ride a-tourneying with a pope’s Bull in my pocket! Madcap, indeed! Who may be the madcap now?”

Of course, I only shammed anger, as is the best way with boys--that is, if you want to find out what is in their hearts (which, of course, you ought not to do). With elder and more experienced men, the old-fashioned dropping of salt water from the eyes is still without a rival. But with boys, and, they say, with those upon the return to a second childhood, anger is a woman’s best weapon.

At any rate upon this occasion it was more than enough. Never moorland whaup stricken to the heart by the winged shaft of the archer from behind his decoy bush fell more cleanly than did my poor Laurence.

“Do not be angry,” he pleaded piteously. “Indeed I meant no ill. I could not. For I love you--yes, I, who am but a blacksmith’s son and half a clerk besides--dare to love you! So that my heart is like to be broke because I see you about to marry a man without loving him, and”--(here he paused a long time, as if still afraid of my anger)--“loving another man without being able to marry him!”

I sprang to my feet, and then indeed I was angry, as anyone may well believe.

“You mean James Douglas!” I cried, taking a step back from him.

Then he answered very gently, wondrously so indeed for a son of Malise M‘Kim, “God forgive me, I would that I could say that I meant mysel’!”