THE ISLE OF BLISS
Under the double shelter of the great cliffs of Lianacraig and the
lower but more effectual barrier of the ridge which runs across the
little island of Fiara in the direction of its greatest length, Wat
and his love abode for a season in great peace. Scarlett accepted
the situation with the trained alacrity of a soldier of fortune. He
built camp-fires of the drift-wood of the shore, allowing the smoke to
dissipate itself along the walls of the cliffs upon dark nights, and
using only charred and smokeless wood on the smaller cooking-fires of
the day.
He also took Wise Jan under his sway and rigid governance, so that,
very much to his own surprise, that youth found himself continually
running here and there at the word of command, as unquestioningly as
if he had been a recruit of a newly formed regiment under the drastic
treatment of the famous master-at-arms.
At first Kate felt the strangeness of being left upon a lonely island
with none of her own sex to speak to or give her countenance. But she
was a girl of many experiences in a world which was then specially hard
and cruel to lonely women.
While yet a child she had seen houses invaded by rude soldiery. She
had fled from conventicle with the clatter of hoofs and the call of
trumpet telling of the deadly pursuit behind her. Even the manner of
her capture and her confinement on this distant isle told a plain tale
of suffering endured and experience gained. Hers had been, largely by
her own choice, no sheltered life passed in the bieldy howe of common
things. She had met sorrow and difficulty before, face to face, eye to
eye, and was ready so to encounter them again.
But to be on the island of Fiara in daily contact with her lover, to
gain momentarily in knowledge of her own affection, to feel the bonds
which bound her to this one man continually strengthen, were some of
the new experiences of these halcyon days.
Wat and Kate walked much under the shelter of that wall of rocks which
stood a hundred yards back from the sandy northern shore of the island.
Here they were screened from observation in every direction save
towards the north, and that way the sea was clear to the Pole. Blue and
lonely it spread before them, the waves coming glittering and balancing
in from the regions of ice and mist, as sunnily and invitingly as
though they had been the billows of the Pacific arching themselves in
thunder upon a strand of coral.
Here the two walked at morn and even, discussing, among other things,
their loves, their former happenings, the strange ways of Providence:
most of all their future, which, indeed, looked dark enough at the
present, but which, nevertheless, shone for them with a rosy glow of
hope and youth. There are no aspirants more sure of success than the
young who, strong in the permanence of mutual affection, take hands
and look towards the rising sun. All happens to those who know how to
wait, especially if they have the necessary time before them. If they
be young, the multitude of the coming years beckons them onward, and so
their hearts be true and worthy, the very stars in their courses will
fight for them. The hatreds and prejudices which oppose them lose their
edge; their opponents, being of those that go down the slope to the
dark archway of death, pass away within and are seen no more. But the
young true-lovers remain. And lo! in a moment there is nothing before
them but the plain way to walk in--the sweetness of a morning still
young, a morning without clouds, the sweeter for the night and the long
and weary way they have come together, hand in loving hand.
"Kate," said Wat, "tell me when you first knew that you loved me."
They were walking on the sand, across which the evening shadows were
beginning to lengthen over the intricate maze of ripple-marks, and when
each whorled worm-casting was gathering a little pool of blue shadow on
its eastern side.
The girl clasped her hands behind her back and gazed abstractedly away
to the sunsetting, her shapely head turned a little aside as though she
were listening to the voice of her own heart and hearing its answer too
keenly to dare give it vent in words.
"I think," said she, at last, very slowly--"I think I began to love you
on the night when I saw you first, after I had come across the seas to
Holland."
"What!" cried Lochinvar, astonished at her answer; "but then you were
more hard and cruel to me than ever--would not even hear me speak, and
sent me away unsatisfied and most unhappy."
Kate gave Wat a glance which said for a sufficient answer, had he
possessed the wit to read it: "I was a woman, and so afraid of my own
heart--you a man, and therefore could not help revealing yours."
"It was then," she answered, aloud, "that I first felt in my own breast
the danger of loving you. That made me afraid--yes, much afraid."
"And why were you afraid, dear love?" Wat questioned, softly.
"Because in love a woman has to think for herself, and for him who
loves her, also. She sees further on. Difficulties loom larger to her.
They close in upon her soul and fright her. Then, also, she has to
watch within, lest--lest--"
Here the girl stopped and gazed away pensively to the north. She did
not finish her sentence.
"Lest what, Kate?" urged Wat, softly, eager for the ending of her
confession, for the revelation of the maiden's heart was sweet to him.
"Lest her own heart betray her and open its gates to the enemy," she
answered, very low.
She walked on more sharply for a space. She was still thinking, and Wat
had the sense not to interrupt her meditation.
"Yet the chief matter of her thought," she went on, "the thought of
the girl who is wooed and is in danger of loving, is only to keep the
castle so long--and then, when she is sure that the right besieger
blows the horn without the gate, she leaps up with joy to draw the
bolts of the doors, to fling them wide open, to strike the flag that
waves aloft. Then, right glad at heart, she runs to meet her lord in
the gateway, with the keys of her life in her hands."
She turned herself suddenly about with a lovely expression of trust in
her eyes, and impulsively held out both her own hands.
"Take them," she said, "my lord!"
And Wat Gordon took the girl's hands in his, and falling on his knee he
kissed them very tenderly and reverently.
Then he rose, and keeping her left hand still in his right, they walked
along silently for a time into the sunset, their eyes wet because of
the sound of their hearts crying each to each, and the shining of love
glowing richer than the rose of the west on their faces.
It was Wat who spoke first.
"Love," he said, "you will never change when the days darken? You will
stand firm when you hear me spoken against, when you cannot thus
hearken to my voice pleading with you, when there is none to speak well
of me?"
"My lad, was it not then that I loved you most," she replied, very
gently, "when men spoke evil things in my ears, and told me how that
you were unworthy, unknightly, untrue? Was it not even then that my
heart cried out louder than ever, 'I will believe my king before them
all--before the hearing of my friend's ears, the seeing of my mother's
eyes, before the sworn word on the tongue of my father?'"
"Ah, love," said Wat, "it is sweet, greatly sweet, to listen to the
speaking of your heart."
And well might he say it, for it was, indeed, a lovely thing to hear
the throb of faith run rippling through her voice like the sap of the
spring through the quickening forest trees.
"But," he added, with quickly returning melancholy, "doubtless there
are dark days before us, of which, however, we now know the worst.
Will my Kate be sufficient for these things? We have heard what Barra
says--bewitched by what cantrip I know not; but certain it seems that
your father hath ta'en him a new wife, and she hath so worked on his
spirit that he would now deliver you to our enemy over there, on the
isle from which I took you. Suppose that all things went against us,
Kate, and that I was never more than a wanderer and an outcast; suppose
your father ordered, your friends compelled, your own heart told you
tales of our love's hopelessness, or others carried to you evil things
of me--would you be strong enough to keep faith, Kate, to hold my hand
firmly as you do now, and having done all, still be able to stand?"
The girl looked at her lover a little sadly while he was speaking, as
if he had, indeed, a far road to travel ere he could win to the inmost
secret of a girl's heart.
"Wat Gordon," she said, "know you not that there is but one kind of
love? There are not two. The love of the wanton that grasps and takes
only is no love--but light-o'-love. The love that flinches back into
shelter because the wind blows is not love; nor yet that which hides
itself, afraid when the lift darkens or when the thunder broods and the
bolt of heaven is hurled."
There came a kind of awful sweetness on his love's face as she stood
looking up at him which made Wat Gordon tremble in his turn. By his
doubts he had jangled the deepest chords of a heart. He stood in the
presence of things mightier than he had dreamed of. Yet his fear was
natural. He knew himself to be true as God is true. But then he had
everything to gain--this woman who held his hand all things to lose,
everything to endure.
Kate went on, for strong words were stirring in her heart, and the
mystery of a mighty love brooded over the troubled waters of her soul
like the mystery of the seven stars in God's right hand.
"But one kind of love," she said, in a low, hushed voice, which Wat
had to incline his ear to catch. And there came also a crooning rhythm
into her utterance, as if she were inspired and spake prophecies. "How
says the Writing? 'Love suffereth long and is kind.' So at least the
preachers expound it. There is no self in love. Self dies and is buried
as soon as soul has looked into soul through the windows of the eyes,
as soon as heart has throbbed against naked heart, and life been taken
into life. Dead and buried is Self, and over his head the true-lovers
set up a gravestone, with the inscription: 'Love seeketh not her
own--is not easily provoked--thinketh no evil.'"
"Oh love," groaned Wat, "if I could but believe it! But all things are
so grievously against me. I can only bid you wait, and after all there
may be but an exile's fate to share with you, a barren, unfruitful
lordship; while there are those, great and powerful, who could set the
coronet on your brow."
The girl let his hand drop. She stood looking a long while to seaward.
Then with sudden, quick resolve, she turned and faced him. She lifted
her hands and laid them on his shoulders, keeping him at the full
stretch of her arms so that she might look deep down into his heart.
"I am not angry with you, Wat," she said, softly and slowly, "though I
might be. Why will you let me fight this battle alone? Why must I have
faith for both of us? Surely in time you will understand and believe.
Hear me, true lad," she put her hands a little farther over his
shoulders and moved an inch nearer him; "you make me say things that
shame me. But what can I do? I only tell you what I would be proud to
tell all the world, if it stood about us now as it shall stand on the
great Day of Judgment. I would rather drink the drop and bite the crust
by the way-side with you, Wat Gordon; rather be an outcast woman among
the godless gypsy-folk with you--aye, without either matron's ring to
clasp my finger or maiden's snood to bind my hair--than be a king's
wife and sit on a throne with princesses about me for my tire-women."
She had brought her face nearer to his as she spoke, white and drawn
with her love and its expression. Now when she had finished she held
him for a moment fixed with her eyes, as it were nailing the truth
she had spoken to his very soul. Then swiftly changing her mood, she
dropped her arms from his shoulders and moved away along the beach.
Wat hastened after her and walked beside her, watching her. He strove
more than once to take her hand, but she kept it almost petulantly
away from him. The tears were running down her cheeks silently and
steadily. Her underlip was quivering. The girl who had been brave for
two, now shook like a leaf. They came to the corner of the inland cliff
of Fiara, which had gradually withdrawn itself farther and farther up
the beach, as the tide-race swept more and more sand along the northern
front of the inland. A rowan-tree grew out of a cleft. Its trunk
projected some feet horizontally before it turned upward. Kate leaned
against it and buried her face in her hands.
Wat stood close beside her, longing with all his nature to touch her,
to comfort her; but something held him back. He felt within him that
caressing was not her mood.
"Hearken, sweet love," he said, beseechingly, clasping his hands over
each other in an agony of helpless desire; "I also have something to
say to you."
"Oh, you should not have done it," she said, looking at him through
her streaming tears; "you ought not to have let me say it. You should
have believed without needing me to tell you. But now I have told you,
I shall never be my own again; and some day you will think that I have
been too fond, too sudden--"
"Kate," said Wat, all himself again at her words, and coming
masterfully forward to take her by the wrists. He knelt on one knee
before her, holding her in his turn, almost paining her by the
intensity of his grasp. "Kate, you shall listen to me. You blame me
wrongly; I have not indeed, to-day, told you of _my_ faith, of _my_
devotion, of the certainty of _my_ standing firm through all the
darkness that is to come. And I will tell you why."
"Yes," said the girl, a little breathlessly; "tell me why."
"Because," said Wat, looking straight at her, "you never doubted these
things even once. You knew me better, aye, even when you flouted me,
set me back, treated me as a child, even when others spoke to you of
my lightness, told you of my sins and wrong-doings. I defy you, Kate
McGhie," he continued, his voice rising--"I defy you to say that there
ever was a moment when you honestly doubted my love, when you ever
dreamed that I could love any but you--so much as an instant when the
thought that I might forget or be false to you had a lodgment in your
heart. Kate, I leave it to yourself to say."
This is the generous uncandor which touches good women to the heart.
For Wat was not answering the real accusation she had brought against
him--that he had not believed her, but had continued to doubt her in
the face of her truest words and most speaking actions.
"Ah, Wat," she said, surrendering at once, "forgive me. It is true. I
did not ever doubt you."
She smiled at him a moment through her tears.
"I knew all too well that you loved me--silly lad," she said; "I saw in
your eyes what you thought before you ever told me--and even now I have
to prompt you to sweet speeches, dear Sir Snail!"
At this encouragement Wat would gladly have drawn her closer to him,
but the girl began to walk back towards their heather-grown shelter.
"Yet I care not," she said. "After all, 'tis a great thing to get one's
follies over in youth. And you are my folly, lad--a grievous one, it
is true, but nevertheless one that now I could ill do without. Nay,"
she went on, seeing him at this point ready to encroach, "not that
to-night, Wat. All is said that needs to be said. Let us return."
And so they walked soberly and silently to the wide-halled chamber
recessed in the ancient sea-cliff. Kate paused ere they entered, and
held her face up with a world of sweet surrender in it for Wat to kiss
at his will.
"Dear love," she said, softly, "I beseech you do not distrust me any
more. By this and by this, know that I am all your own. Once you made
me say it. Now of mine own will I do it."
She spoke the last words shyly; then swiftly, as one that takes great
courage on the edge of flight:
"Bend down your ear, laddie," she said, and paused while one might
count a score.
Wat listened keenly, afraid that his own heart should beat too loud for
him to catch every precious word.
"I love you so that I would gladly die to give you perfect happiness
even for a day," she whispered.
And she vanished within, without so much as bidding him good-night.