Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume II). William Black
of her fingers to her eyes, to wipe away the tears that lay along the lashes. "And then I was mad; I was out of my senses; I would have married anybody to show that – that I cared nothing for – for the other one; and – and I suppose he was angry too – he would not speak – he stood aside, and knew that I was going to kill my life, and never a single word! That was his revenge – to say nothing – when he saw me about to kill my life! Cruel, do you call it? Oh, no! – what does it matter? A woman's heart broken – what is that? But now you know why I think so of men – and – and why I laugh at them – "
Well, her laughing was strange: she suddenly burst into a violent fit of crying and sobbing, and turned away from him, and hid her face in her handkerchief. What could he do? This was all unlike the gay young widow who seemed so proud of her solitary estate and so well content. Feeble words of comfort were of small avail. And then, again, it hardly seemed the proper occasion for offering her more substantial sympathy – though that was in his mind all the while, and very nearly on the tip of his tongue. So perforce he had to wait until her weeping was over; and indeed it was she herself who ended the scene by exclaiming impatiently —
"There – enough of that! I did not intend to bother you with my small troubles when I stayed behind for you this morning. Come, shall we go out on to the rocks, and round by the little bay? What do you call it – Ganovan?"
"Yes; I think they call it Little Ganovan," he said, absently, as he and she together emerged from the twilight of larch and pine, and proceeded, leisurely and in silence, to cross the semicircular sweep of yellow sand.
When they got to the edge of the rocks, they sat down there: apparently they had nothing to do on this idle morning but to contemplate that vast, far-murmuring, dark blue plain – touched here and there with a sharp glimmer of white – and the range upon range of the Kingairloch hills, deepening in purple gloom, or shining rose-grey and yellow-grey in the sun. In this solitude they were quite alone save for the sea-birds that had wheeled into the air, screaming and calling, at their approach; but the terns and curlews were soon at peace again; a cloud of gulls returned to one of the little islands just in front of them; while a slow-flapping heron winged its heavy flight away to the north. All once more was silence; and the world was to themselves.
And yet what was he to say to this poor suffering soul whose tragic sorrows and experiences had been thus unexpectedly disclosed? He really wished to be sympathetic; and, if he dared, he would have reminded her that only he knew how difficult it is to quote poetry without making one's self ridiculous; and also he knew that the pretty young widow's eyes had a dangerous trick of sudden laughter. However, it was she who first spoke.
'Whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.'
"I wonder what those who have gone to church will say when they discover that we have spent all the morning here?"
"They may say what they like," he made answer, promptly. "There are things one cannot speak about in drawing-rooms, among a crowd. And how could I ever have imagined that you, with your high spirits and merry temperament, and perpetual good-humour, had come through such trials? I wonder that people never think of the mischief that is done by intermeddling – "
"Intermeddling?" said she proudly. "It wasn't of intermeddling I had to complain: it was a downright conspiracy – it was false stories – I was deceived by those who professed to be my best friends. There is intermeddling and intermeddling. You might say I was intermeddling in the case of my nephew. But what harm can come of that? It is not lies, it is the truth, I want to have told him. And even if it causes him some pain, it will be for his good. Don't you think I am right?"
He hesitated.
"I hope so," he said. "But you know things wear such a different complexion according to the way you look at them – "
"But facts, Lord Musselburgh, facts," she persisted. "Do you think a man like George Morris would be affected by any sentimental considerations one way or the other? Won't he find out just the truth? And that is all I honestly want Vin to know – the actual truth: then let him go on with his eyes open if he chooses. Facts, Lord Musselburgh: who can object to facts?" Then she said – as she gave him her hand that he might assist her to rise —
"We must be thinking of getting back home now, for if we are late for lunch, those Drexel girls will be grinning at each other like a couple of fiends."
Rather reluctantly he rose also, and accompanied her. They made their way across a series of rough, bracken-covered knolls projecting into the sea until they reached the little bay that is known as Port Bân; and here, either the beauty and solitude of the place tempted them, or they were determined to defy sarcasm, for instead of hastening home, they quietly strolled up and down the smooth cream-white beach, now and again picking up a piece of rose-red seaweed, or turning over a limpet-shell, or watching a sandpiper making his quick little runs alongside the clear, crisp-curling ripples. They did not speak; they were as silent as the transparent blue shadows that their figures cast on the soft-yielding surface on which they walked. And sometimes Lord Musselburgh seemed inclined to write something, with the point of his stick, on that flawless sand; and then again he desisted; and still they continued silent.
She took up a piece of pink seaweed, and began pulling it to shreds. He was standing by, looking on.
"Don't you think," said he at last, "that there should be a good deal of sympathy – a very unusual sympathy – between two people who have come through the same suffering?"
"Oh, I suppose so," she said, with affected carelessness – her eyes still bent on the seaweed.
"Do you know," said he, again, "that I haven't the least idea what your name is!"
"My name? Oh, my name is Madge," she answered.
"Madge?" said he. "I wonder if you make the capital M this way?" and therewith he traced on the sand an ornamental M in the manner of the last century.
"No, I don't," she said, "but it is very pretty. How do you write the rest?"
Thus encouraged, he made bold to add the remaining letters, and seemed rather to admire his handiwork when it was done.
"By the way," she said, "I don't know your Christian name either!"
"Hubert."
"Can you write that in the same fashion?" she suggested, with a simple ingenuousness.
So, grown still bolder, he laboriously inscribed his name immediately underneath her own. But that was not all. When he had ended he drew a circle right round both names.
"That is a ring to enclose them," said he: and he turned from the scored names to regard her downcast face. "But – but I know a much smaller ring that could bring them still closer together. Will you let me try – Madge?"
He took her hand.
"Yes," she said, in a low voice.
And then – Oh, very well, then: then – but after a reasonable delay – then they left those creamy sands, and went up by the edge of the blue-green turnip-field to the pathway, and so to the iron gate; and as he opened the gate for her, she said —
"Oh, I don't know what happened down there, and what I've pledged myself to; but at all events there will now be one more on my side, to help me about Vin, and get him out of all this sad trouble. You will help me, won't you – Hubert?"
Of course he was eager to promise anything.
"And you say he is sure to get in for Mendover? Why, just think of him now, with everything before him; and how nice it would be for all of us if he had a smart and clever wife, who would hold her own in society, and do him justice, and make us all as proud and fond of her as we are of him. And just fancy the four of us setting out on a winter-trip to Cairo or Jerusalem: wouldn't it be simply too delicious? The four of us – only the four of us – all by ourselves. Louie Drexel is rather young, to be sure; yet she knows her way about; she's sharp; she's clever; she will