THE GREAT HEART OF A MAN
For a moment we stood there gazing at each other--thus. William
Douglas was bareheaded, looking, as I remember, in his dress of black,
simple as any squire. Yet in spite of all, James Douglas did not let
me go. Courage of certain kinds he did not lack.
As for me, how I summoned myself to meet the ordeal I cannot now
recall. I can remember only that through the first numbing chill of
feeling that all life was overturned and changed, there shot a kind of
thankfulness that it had come--_before_, and not after.
William Douglas might do with me what he listed. But at least he would
know. There was comfort in that. And so for the breathing of twenty
breaths, slowly respired, we stood facing one another without moving.
Then Will lifted his hand from his sword-hilt and pointed to the
entrance of the bower.
“Go!” he commanded in a hard, bitter voice, not loud, but low and
penetrating.
And James, with his arm still firm about my waist, never blenched or
even quivered.
“No, brother Will,” he answered, “I will not go and leave you
with--Margaret!”
“Margaret is my promised wife of to-morrow,” said William Douglas. “I
have had little private converse with her. I desire a word or two here
and now! Go!”
“I stay to defend the woman I love, and the woman who loves me!” said
James, looking his brother in the eye. Douglas to Douglas--they
stood--and a Douglas between! I could not help wondering what would
come out of that--yes, even at the moment I wondered. But then I could
never have devised anything so marvellous as has indeed come to us
three.
“I do not lift my hand upon a woman,” said Will; “you may leave
Margaret Douglas with me and safely. You have said your say. I have
heard. Now, I have somewhat to add. Go and help them with the banquet
tent yonder. I shall be with you later!”
And his eyes, till now steady and black as night, snapped upon his
brother.
Still James hesitated; I think it was in his mind to poniard his
rival. For with his free arm I could feel him grip nervously at the
handle of his dagger--his mind evidently divided within him, wavering
this way and that.
“Go,” said William, without raising his voice, “I am the Douglas!”
The loyalty to the head of his house, which James had sucked in with
his mother’s milk, had the mastery. He went out, clicking back the
dagger into its sheath and never once looking behind him.
So in these unimaginable circumstances I, Margaret Douglas, was left
alone with the man who was to be my husband on the morrow. I stood
wavering, about midway betwixt crying out nervously and fainting away.
Had I not been a girl and innocent, I should assuredly have done the
latter. For to faint in a man’s arms takes the edge off his anger, no
matter how bitter it may be--even as a sleeping-draught of the
apothecary dulls the ill dreams of the night.
But this I did not know, and so sate me down of my own accord on the
seat of rough boards which James had put up in the bower. I only
leaned back and breathed deeply with my eyes shut, for a period which
seemed to be measured by years and ages. And all the while William
Douglas kept his black eyes steadily on me, so that I could feel them
even through my closed lids.
All at once a swift and strange anger against him surged up in my
heart.
After all, had he the right? Marriage, indeed, he had spoken to me of.
Once he had said that he “loved” me. But how? So that I could almost
have laughed at the word. No, he would not terrify me. I was a Douglas
as well as he. Therefore I rose--a little unsteadily, I fear, in spite
of all my courage, and, walking to the river-edge, I dipped my
kerchief in the clear brown Dee Water.
With this I dabbled my face well, and let it drip, cooling the palms
of my hands. I was determined that Will, whatever he might do or say
to me, should not have the advantage because of any girlish weakness
on my part.
But I own, in spite of my preparedness, that what he did say to me
took away my breath. That he should have slain me with his hand or
sent me to a convent for my life’s term would have surprised me less.
Douglases had done as much before to their women folk, even after they
had been wedded a long time.
“I have spoken with Mistress Maud Lindsay,” he said. “She it was who
bade me come to this place--_because I would not believe!_”
Then I sprang to my feet. Hot anger ran white as molten metal from my
brain to my heart, and from my heart to my finger-tips.
“Maud--my Maud Lindsay, whom I trusted--believed my only friend--to
betray me!” I cried.
“Nay,” he said in the same voice, low, even, and a little chill, “not
your only friend, nor yet a traitress. Your best friend--_save,
perhaps, one!_”
I do not know that for a long minute my brain took any meaning from
these words. They might have been Latin, like the monk’s songs, for
all they conveyed to me. But slowly there dawned the hope,
inexpressible, unbelievable, that, knowing all, William Douglas was
not angry with me.
I asked him in as many words. But as I drew nearer, I saw him shrink
away a little--unconsciously, as I now know, but as I then thought
because James had so recently held me in his arms.
“Angry with you, child?” he said, his voice vibrating strangely; “nay;
but my eyes are opened.”
“It was nothing,” I said, trying to speak lightly. “James was but
bidding me farewell. He teased and craked like a scarecrow in the
cornfields till I had perforce to let him kiss me. I did wrong.”
William Douglas waved his hand, as if all that I spoke of was an
afterthought, a nothing, even as I had said.
“My eyes were opened wide before ever I came hither,” he said.
“Hitherto I have walked in darkness; but Maud Lindsay has made me
see!”
I waited for that which should come next.
“Child,” he went on again, “I wonder if you will understand? I fear
not. The matter is too great for you. But at first, when she spoke, I
would not believe that you could think of another. Love, betrothals,
marriage, the hope of children born to the house of Douglas: these had
always appeared to my mind as so many links in a chain, a chain which
was to bind you and me for always. To me, you have been all my life
the Little Maid whom I used to see on my visits to Thrieve. But I
forgat (having, indeed, many things upon my mind) that now you had
grown into a woman; that you needed other love, other care; that if I
did not speak--well, there were others less tied of tongue!”
I did not speak, for, indeed, he seemed to be speaking as much to
himself as to me. Presently, I think, his mood changed. He sat down
near me, and let his words fall with a commoner and more friendly
accent.
“‘Your fault,’ said Maud Lindsay, ‘all your own fault, William
Douglas!’ I agree! Only, you see, I did not know. But it is a crime
for a man not to know. A man is maimed who goes through life thus,
with eyes that tell him nothing of women, scarce even the colour of
their hair, or whether the blush on their cheek is for his own
incoming or for that of another man!”
“William,” I said, “I promised that I would be a true and good wife to
you. I have continued to intend no less. Is that not enough for you
and me? We need not expect great things of each other!”
He smiled very sadly.
“No,” he said. “I am well served. In my folly I thought it was enough
to tell a girl that I loved her, knowing that one day she was to be my
wife, and that then I could tell her better. Listen, child--what I say
is strange. I love you. I love you as James yonder will never love
you--no, nor any woman. He hath it not in him. Nevertheless, I know--I
have seen--I have heard--the thing Maud Lindsay told me, that your
love is not for me! Not now, my child--not ten years hence--not for
ever!”
I laid my hand on his, and I think that I must have sobbed aloud. “I
do love you, Cousin Will--as--_as much as I can_.” These were the
words I said.
He touched the back of my hand gently. Then, stooping, he kissed it,
laying it back again on my lap. But there was no caressing in his
touch, only somewhat of that sad tenderness with which we resign our
best loved dead to the white swathings and the hollow falling of the
clods.
“Yes,” he said, “that is it in a word. You have said it--‘as well as
you can’--so you would love your husband, It is a true word. But I saw
your eyes as you lay in my brother’s arms. That is another sort of
love--something I shall never know--shut away from me--lost for ever.
And by my own fault. I have chosen the worser part, of that I do not
doubt. But such as it is--’tis too late to go back upon it now!”
I had no word to say. For though there was no right tenderness for
William Douglas in my heart--not, at least, such as he spake of--I
could not love him as my husband--no, not if he had been the angel
Gabriel, with all the virtues of heaven thick upon him. I am of the
earth, earthy, and it was the chief of my good qualities that I was
ever candid enough to acknowledge it.
“Listen, child,” he said again, and as he spoke all his great, clean,
over-burdened soul seemed to unroll itself before my vision,
“to-morrow I will wed you before the priest. The wheel of fate cannot
go back. So much must be, if all I have striven for--all that your two
brothers died for--is not to be lost in the ruin of our house. But I
will hold you sacred--yes, even as my sister, even as my mother, until
the day of my death. I am a strong man, and able for this thing. Also,
William Douglas was not made for a long life. He fights with
principalities and powers, and shall die--though in his death (I who
speak see it) Scotland shall be new-born. Will you help me in this?”
“I do not wholly understand,” I said, “but at least I will do all you
wish, so be that you are not angry with me for--for--caring about
James! It is only a little, and I could not help it.”
I think he winced at this.
“Nay,” he said, “you I do not blame at all--and James not greatly. He
is as incapable of refraining from the making of love, as I”--
“Of making it!” said I, smiling at my cousin for the first time. “It
may not be too late--who knows? You should go to school to James!”
“I have had one lesson,” he answered, not giving me back my smile, yet
not rejecting it; “it is enough. For me, I will hold to the word I
have spoken. To-morrow is our wedding-day. When we are once married,
you and I, I shall order it so that James shall ride off as upon a
report of danger to the Upper Ward, and I follow him immediately to
Douglas Castle. Meantime, I will leave you here with Maud Lindsay for
your guardian. It shall never be said that William Douglas took what
was another man’s--that is, with knowledge and intent. As for James,
I will speak with him apart. Till we meet at the altar, Margaret, I
bid you farewell!”
And as he said, even so he did.