THE ONE EWE LAMB
It was early borne in upon me that James Douglas would not long make
any woman happy--no, nor yet any people over whom he might bear rule.
He was that most insidious of self-deceivers, the ill-doer who never
means ill to any.
I remember yet the day when the knowledge first came upon me. A great,
high gallant day it was in early summer, the white clouds slow-sailing
through the azure like galleons freighted from wealthiest Ind. James
had, as he told me, gone to hunt certain dangerous wolves which
infested the fastnesses of Buchan and the Dungeon of Enoch. He would
be away for several days, and I was to rest in peace at Thrieve,
awaiting his return.
I did not greatly regret his absence. The castle was so different a
place with James for over-lord--so full of the bravery of noise and
pageant, of horns blowing, of the filling of bumpers and the crying of
healths, that a day or two of the old quiet were to me (at least in my
present case) dreamily grateful. So, in fine, my husband kissed me,
patted me on the head, pulled an ear, and bade me go lie down and
sleep till he should return with a pack of wolf-skins to make a brave
bass for the cradle. For such (there is no need to make secrets of the
matter) constituted my dearest hope at that time.
I still remember the long-drawn peace of that reprieve--the open
windows of the castle, through which came, in puffs and breathings,
the warm perfect wind of the summer days. I recall--with the exactness
of one who recovers from long illness, and who, content with the
surcease of pain, lies lax and faint with every sense rendered more
acute--the plunging splash of the cattle wading clumsily in the
shallows of the ford, the iterated calling of a cuckoo far away in the
woods of Glenlochar, belated and forlorn, and above all the dark
flashing of the swifts’ wings athwart the blue oblong of my open
window, their screaming stoop and swoop from dizzy heights, two
ofttimes clinging together, as if playing at “barley-break” or “pretty
pigeon,” the oft-repeated _whish_ they made as they crossed before the
sill, like the hissing rending of fine silk, and then, seen, but all
unheard, the same black wings half a mile away, beating the air as
they went. I took all in with the net precision of the
convalescent--sights and sounds and scents coming up keen and eager to
my over-excited senses.
It was, as I say, a great drowsy day, already hot and hay-scented by
nine in the morning. They were cutting the meadow, I mind, opposite
the isle, as well as on the flats of Thrieve, and a fine smell it made
in the morning heat.
So I lay long awake, half content with what was, and half a-dream of
what was yet to be. The sharp _cri-cri_ of the mower’s sharpening
strake on his blade hardly disturbed me. It recalled one of those
cicada-crickets of the south, which in harvest used to awake me at
Cour Cheverney even before the bell tolled for matins in the July
mornings.
Then, half asleep and half awake, I lay in a great and sweet peace.
The castle was very silent. Maud had bidden me lie long and take my
rest, saying that that morning she would go to the Three Thorns for
the children. They were to stay at Thrieve till James returned. Maud
loved not to have them where they might hear (especially the twins,
Cuthbert and Brice, who loved the stables and armourer’s sheds) an
occasional rough-spoken word from some of the company that followed
James Douglas. He himself, with all his carelessness, used none
such--only great midriff-shaking laughters and oaths by St. Bride and
St. Loy, which he had learned in France or elsewhere on his travels.
Well, so at least it was. Finally I began to bestir me, and had the
wherewithal to break my fast brought. Then I dozed off again into that
sweet warm summer silence, smoothed by the crisp coolness of the linen
sheets on the bed, that had been freshly spread. But all suddenly I
awoke with a cry. I cannot tell why or how. But I must have been in
great terror. It seemed that I stood on the brink of an abyss--deep,
deep, so deep and palely blue, all swimming with vapours, but with no
bottom. And lo! James came suddenly behind me and pushed me over the
edge. So I fell--fell--fell--till with that cry I awoke to find the
sun shining outside and the cattle splashing and flicking their tails,
yea, even the soft _champ_, _champ_ of their jaws I could hear as they
chewed the cud under the shadow of the castle. All came up, clear and
unforgettable, lying so. And this strangest thing of all I remember,
that when James pushed me, it was not into the abysses of the air that
I fell, but, as it were, into fathomless water. And through the cool,
affrighting blue deeps there swam up to me as it had been an angel
with the head of Larry M‘Kim, and he said to me, “I have made a new
mill-wheel, better than either of the others! Shall we two go and set
it a-going?”
And just then I cried out, and so awaked, trembling and in an access
of terror and dismay.
Yet all without cause, for there, aloft and already right high, was
the summer sun, though it was yet morning. I had not slept long. The
castle and island were silent all about; there was no cause or excuse
for fear; yet I was in a cold sweat of terror so that my teeth
chattered in my head, and that in spite of the warmth of summer.
Somehow Thrieve seemed suddenly accursed. If a volcano vomiting smoke
had arisen under the ilex oaks and white lilacs of the southward
garden, I had not been surprised; indeed, I would have preferred it to
this uncanny silence, which to me somehow grew more and more
unbearable as the moments, leaden-winged, went by like a funeral
procession.
At last I could bear it no longer. I arose and dressed myself swiftly,
as I had always been wont to do. I looked forth. The river went
largely past, flowing by without haste or noise, as was its habit. On
the other side of the castle the courtyard was quiet. No ring of bit
or stirrup iron, not even the hiss of a groom gentling a restive
beast--nothing in the world to make afraid. Nevertheless I remained
terrified--in a great fear _because there was nothing to be afraid
of_.
I went down the stair into the great hall. Silence and gloom brooded
there in Maud’s absence. Only one window was open, and the sunlight
fell upon a glove of James’s, cast aside carelessly, or simply not
picked up as he went out humming a tune or whistling to his dogs.
Somehow this little thing smote me to the heart. I grew faint and
dizzy with looking at it. My heart thrummed in my ears, quick and
light, so that through all my body there went an impatient envy to lie
down and die--that I might be done with it. But I mastered the
feeling, and, going to the cupboard, took down a glass of the strong
wine of Malaga, which afforded me some strength in my causeless fear
and foolish weakness.
But for all that I could not rest in the castle--no, not for a moment
longer. So I went out, and just within the stable precincts I came
upon a quartette of grooms, some asleep, and some merely chewing of
straws on a bed of fodder. And when they saw me they stood up
blinkingly, and, as it seemed, with a sort of dull, loutish
resentment, like servitors disturbed at a meal. For me they had noways
expected, having kept track only of Sholto and Maud, their accustomed
superiors, and of my Lord James, who was to them as a god, and
observed as such in his comings and goings, his horse-ridings and
tiltings.
It seemed somehow that there was a power compelling me to go and
search for Maud and her children. Some disaster had surely overtaken
them. It was in vain that Andro the Penman pressed upon me that,
Sholto being with them, nothing disastrous could possibly happen.
Nevertheless I was far from content. The heart within me fluttered
like a shadow in clear water.
So surpassing grew my distress that I bade Andro saddle the white
Arab, saying that I would ride by myself. He prayed and besought me to
allow him to accompany me. But I refused. Somehow I knew that I must
go alone to the Three Thorns that day. It was not a long way. Across
by the ford I went, riding easily, because Haifa loved to dabble her
four white feet in the cool peaty brown of the shallow rushing water.
Then through the rushes and the reeds, with plenty of brackeny dry
places where the rabbits scuffled hastily into the undergrowth; broomy
knowes, where all day long one heard the _Whit-whit-whee_ of the
stonechat or the _Chee-chee-cheee-ic_ of the ox-eye searching for
insects among the fresh fir-cones of the wood edges.
Then _splash_--_splash_--_splash_ we went through the marshes, alive
with the waxy flowers of the bog-bean, bristling with spiky
horse-tails, and having whole fleets of water-lilies orange and
water-lilies white afloat on the shallow meres.
Then came the ascent of the little hill of Carlinwark, through the
avenues of beeches which temper the summer heats, and even in winter
made so gallant a show.
I paused as I came to the summit. I had seen the fair landscape so
often that it almost seemed like my home. Down by the willows Laurence
and I had launched our first boats, his kilts every whit as short as
my skirts. Farther to the left, behind the armourer’s shop (they
called it only a “smiddy” then) I had kept watch, throwing a stone far
into the water if any intruder seemed likely to disturb Sholto and
Maud in the ardencies of their earliest love-makings.
Yonder, where the beeches were tallest and oldest, a fair and gracious
lady, the mystic and fated Sybilla, had first appeared to my brother
William, presaging the death to which his love for her had ultimately
lured him.
The children--yes, there they were! I could see them on the green
playing at “My Fair Lady,” just as the bairns of the Three Thorns had
done for ages--and do, I daresay, unto this hour.
How glad I was to hear their voices! There could be nothing very far
wrong with Maud or Sholto, so long as they were at their dainty
bairnly ploys out on that green sward, dandelion-studded and
daisy-pied down to the ring of pebbles on which the wavelets beat.
But I listened in vain for that other far-heard, well-kenned sound,
the ring of iron on anvil from the forge. The great grimy door stood
open. I could see within. But the fire was black out. There was no one
of the blithe brothers at the bellows, bare of arm and with cap set
rakishly over his left eye, as is the wont of armourers’ ’prentices
all the world over. Moreover, I could see nothing of Malise, that
mighty smith, his apron (so they said) made of the whole hide of an ox
of girth, and his blanched hair spraying over his temples as he tossed
his head back to survey the final stages of some new masterpiece.
Then I remarked something. In spite of the ring of the children’s
laughter, there lay upon the cottage of the Three Thorns the same
uncanny silence as had brooded upon Thrieve. Or, at least, so at the
moment it seemed to me.
I went down hastily. Yet none came forth to welcome me, as I tied
Haifa to the iron ring let into the gable at the peat-stack end. None
ran to offer me a chair when I went within. The family were gathered
about the great holystoned houseplace which Dame M‘Kim kept in the
fashion of a new pin. White-faced, aghast, terrified into silence,
they sat watching Malise, their father, who, his head sunk between his
hands, was torn with a grief so terrible, so rending, so inhuman, that
there is no word in any language known to me which can describe it.
Nevertheless I went in, and the momentary darkening of the chamber
caused by the figure in the doorway warned Malise that some other
human being had entered in upon their grief.
He started up, his face dark and swollen with something sadder than
anguish and more terrible than rage. I think for a beat of pulses he
meant to dash out my brains. But Sholto rose and stood between us.
“Hush, father,” he said; “remember--she does not know! She also is
smitten--_even as we!_”
He added the last words almost in a whisper.
Then as my eye went round the family of Malise the smith, I saw that
Magdalen was absent.
And suddenly, in a moment, as the lightning flashes full circle from
the east to the west, without further word I understood all.