William Black - Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume II)

"Oh, no," said Lord Musselburgh, shrinking back, as it were. "No; I don't want to take part in it. Of course, you may be acting quite rightly; no doubt you are acting entirely in Vin's interests; but – but I would rather have nothing to do with it."

"And yet you call yourself Vin's friend! Come, tell me!" she said, coaxingly.

Again he refused.

"Mind you, I believe I could find out for myself," she went on. "I know that he is the editor of a newspaper in New York – a Scotch newspaper: come, Lord Musselburgh, give me his name, or the name of the newspaper!"

He shook his head.

"No – not fair," he said.

Then she stopped, and faced him, and regarded him with arch eyes.

"And yet it was on this very pathway, only yesterday morning, that you swore that there was nothing in the world that you wouldn't do for me!"

"That was different," said he, with some hesitation. "I meant as regards myself. This concerns some one else."

"Oh, very well," said she, and she walked on proudly. "I dare say I can find out."

He touched her arm to detain her.

"Have you a note-book?" he asked.

She took from her pocket a combined purse and note-book; and without a word – or a smile – she pulled out the pencil.

"'Hugh Anstruther, Western Scotsman Office, New York,'" said he, rather shamefacedly.

"There, that is all right!" she said, blithely, and she put the note-book in her pocket again. "That is as far as we can go in that matter at present; and now we can talk of something else. What is the name of this little bay?"

"Little Ganovan, I believe."

"And the other one we passed?"

"Port Bân."

"What is the legend attached to the robber's cave up there in the rocks?"

"The legend? Oh, some one told me the gardener keeps his tools in that cave."

"What kind of a legend is that!" she said, impatiently; and then she went on with her questions. "Why doesn't anybody ever come round this way?"

"I suppose because they know we want the place to ourselves."

"And why should we want the place to ourselves?"

This was unexpected. He paused.

"Ah," said he, "what is the use of my telling you? All your interest is centred on Vin. I suppose a woman can only be interested in one man at any one time."

"Well, I should hope so!" the young widow said, cheerfully. "Shall we go round by the rocks or through the trees?"

For they were now come to a little wood of birch and larch and pine; and without more ado he led the way, pushing through the outlying tall bracken and getting in underneath the branches.

"I suppose," said he, in a rather rueful tone, "that you don't know what is the greatest proof of affection that a man can show to a woman? No, of course you don't!"

"What is it, then?" she demanded, as she followed him stooping.

"Why, it's going first through a wood, and getting all the spider's-webs on his nose."

But presently they had come to a clearer space, where they could walk together, their footfalls hushed by the carpet of withered fir-needles; while here and there a rabbit would scurry off, and again they would catch a glimpse of a hen-pheasant sedately walking down a glade between the trees. And now their talk had become much more intimate and confidential; it had even assumed a touch of more or less affected sadness.

"It's very hard," he was saying, "that you should understand me so little. You think I am cold, and cynical, and callous. Well, perhaps I have reason to be. I have had my little experience of womankind – of one woman, rather. I sometimes wonder whether the rest are anything like her, or are capable of acting as she did."

"Who was she?" his companion asked, timidly.

And therewith, as they idly and slowly strolled through this little thicket, he told his tragic tale, which needs not to be set down here: it was all about the James river, Virginia, and a pair of southern eyes, and betrayal, and farewell, and black night. His companion listened in the deep silence of sympathy; and when he had finished she said, in a low voice, and with downcast eyes —

"I am sorry – very sorry. But at least there was one thing spared you: you did not marry out of spite."

He glanced at her quickly.

"Oh, yes," she said, and she raised her head, and spoke with a proud and bitter air, "I have my story too! I do not tell it to everyone. Perhaps I have not told it to anyone. But the man I loved was separated from me by lies – by lies; and I was fool and idiot enough to believe them! And the one I told you about – the one with the beautiful, clear, brown eyes – so good and noble he was, as everyone declared! – it was he who came to me with those falsehoods; and I believed them – I believed them – like the fool I was! Oh, yes," she said, and she held her head high, for her breast was heaving with real emotion this time, "it is easy to say that every mistake meets with its own punishment; but I was punished too much – too much; a life-long punishment for believing what lying friends had said to me!" She furtively put the tips 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.