THE WHITE FACE OF FATE
And I was not mistaken.
Sholto stood with his hand on the old man’s arm. Maud sat
still-stricken in the window corner. The younger lads read their
father’s face with a kind of awe. Only Sholto was master of himself,
and, by consequence, of all within the house. Even his mother had been
subdued from her torment of mourning by the young man’s steady quiet.
“What is it? Tell me!” I cried. “Tell me quickly--all that has
happened!”
Though indeed, as I have said, I knew before any had time to speak.
Then Maud, seeing it was for the best that Sholto should be left with
his father and mother, wordlessly beckoned me to follow her out upon
the green. So forth from this dark House of Doom we stepped at once
into the great blue sunshiny day, with the whaups and water-birds
crying aloft, and the airs blowing brisk and caller from the braes of
Cuill and Castle Gower. But what struck me most was the sound of the
bairns playing innocently together. They were singing as of yore the
refrain--
“What will the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you?
What will the robbers do to you,
My Fair Lady?”
And it was wondrous wae to see the young things thus sporting on the
grass, joining hands, advancing and retiring, bowing, and waving
hands, according as their dance led them, and yet know that within
that house there was not one, old or young, who had not a broken
heart.
To escape their importunities Maud and I walked a little apart into
the glades of the wood, without looking the one at the other. Then,
all suddenly, she spoke.
“_The Earl James hath taken away our little Magdalen!_”
Yes, I had known it. As I said before, I understood at once, as soon
as I had looked at those poor folk gathered in the cottage of the
Three Thorns. But to hear it spoken for truth and fact was another
matter. The words turned me sick, not perhaps with anger, or even
sorrow, as it ought, but first of all, and before I thought of the
M‘Kims, with the ignominy of it.
To Maud I made no answer; words failed me. I felt as if I must drop
down and die. But to die thus is not given to women when they will,
not even when they pray hardest for it. There were the playing babes,
there the green lakeside strath, yonder the birds, the red-painted
heather, the blue sky: all as it had been. Yet to be shamed every day
and all the days, till I died; that was the difference.
God help us all! We are weak creatures. Oftentimes it is the
surroundings of misfortune, the pattern of the cup from which we
drink, that make the draught most bitter! That another should know,
that nature should be so cruelly careless and indifferent--these
things pique us with sharper agony than even the friend’s knife in the
heart. One is never betrayed but by one’s own, they say; and so I was
slain by James--James, who had brought me new life, the very
beginnings of life, indeed, after those ten years of slow death at
Thrieve, when I was a woman, and did not know it until he showed me.
And now, now he had taken the life he gave--taken it, and rendered it
vile.
Such a short time ago it seemed since he came riding in that first
time with his retinue through the great archway of Thrieve! And yet,
walking there by the side of the water, I never once thought of
questioning the truth of the accuser’s word. Besides, I had known Maud
Lindsay all my life; I had known Sholto; I had known Dame
Barbara--Malise; they did not lie.
Yet I made no protestations; scarce had I care or interest sufficient
to ask how the thing had become known. But at last I found the words.
“Tell me, Maud,” I said, with that curious chill calm which comes at
such times, as if some other than I were speaking, “who hath brought
this story to the Three Thorns?”
She took from her pocket a little crumpled scrap of paper. It was
written in Magdalen’s hand-of-write. Laurence himself had taught her,
and she wrote clearly and like a clerk, forming her letters one by one
without running them together as the manner of some is.
“Read it!” she said. “God in His heaven, surely you have the right!”
At first the words refused to form themselves before my eyes. I gat no
sort of meaning out of the written characters, but after a while they
seemed to swim up to me out of a glancing mist.
“My Father,”--wrote Magdalen M‘Kim,--“This will bring you pain--to
you and all, to my mother--but most (and most bitterly I grieve for
that) to the gracious lady of Castle Thrieve. But till he came into my
life, I had never loved any man. And I stood out long--long against
his will--till the thing grew too strong for me. I can do no more. I
love the Earl James, as a woman loves a man when she will gladly give
her life for him. He is great--I less than nothing. Let him do with me
whatsoever he will. Be not sorry overmuch or overlong for the pain I
have left behind me. Be sorry rather in that God hath made such a
thing as I am desirable in the eyes of any man! But be never sorry for
her who, till this day, had the right to sign herself,
“Your Daughter Magdalen,
“Little and Only.”
Slowly the truth entered in--sharp as the knife of a surgeon, or,
perchance, more like a probe moved cunningly to find the root of some
hidden disease. Through the unchanged brightness of the glad high day
came slowly the intolerable certainty that this thing was mine--_my_
shame, _my_ sorrow, _my_ cross that I must carry till I died.
And James had done this to me. Well, even at the first I found the
thing not inexplicable--so far, that is, as he was concerned. But
Magdalen M‘Kim, the girl who wandered far from her home to be alone
with the wild things of the hills and the woods, what had she found in
James Douglas? Ah, that question was more difficult; yet for the
present it did not greatly concern or even interest me.
“What will they do?” I asked of Maud, as she sat with her face firm,
fixed, and pale as wax, looking across the loch to the sapphire ridge
of Ben Gairn solid against the southern horizon.
“God help us all, I know not!” she answered; “the M‘Kims have made an
oath to find her first and kill the Lord James afterwards--that is,
all but Sholto! Malise the smith it was laid it upon the lads. He
swears he will hunt the traitor as he hunted De Retz. They have sworn
a bond of vengeance, each pricking himself and signing with his
blood.”
“But Sholto,” I said, “will he leave me alone in my time of need? Will
he hold as naught the love of a lifetime? And you, Maud, what will you
do?”
She shook her head, very sadly and slowly. The tears flowed silently
down her cheeks. She did not weep. Only when one glanced at her, lo!
there was the water running down her face. But not looking closely,
one might have noticed nothing.
“Ah, Margaret,” she made answer at last, “that I know not. I am your
friend always, but a wife must go with her husband!”
I could not restrain a sharp intake of the breath as she spoke the
words. They fell hard on me, remembering those things which I had just
listened to. But Maud, for once not wholly enwrapt in her husband and
her babes, turned and caught me.
“I meant it not,” she said; “forgive me! But believe me also--Sholto
will never be less your friend. I know him. Ten times for one it is I
who bid him do this or that. But when there comes a look--a certain
look I know well on his face, I am glad--yes, very glad to be silent
and obey! Thus it is with women!”
Then I had a kind of access of foolish tears--the first. And perhaps,
I have since thought, it was that weeping which saved me.
“Maud,” I cried, “is it not strange that I am like the woman in the
Scripture--she who had so many husbands--and he whom she now hath is
not her husband?”
“Hush!” commanded Maud; “it is not good that one in grief should speak
of such things. The sorrow comes from God!”
“And James Douglas?” I queried; “perhaps he and his sin also come from
God?”
But seeing my mood, she would not answer, but held her peace, and that
wisely.
“This becomes you not, Margaret,” she said, gently holding me with her
strong young arms laid motherly about my shoulders; “you can do
nothing here. Get you back to Thrieve. Sholto shall go with you. As
soon as may be I will follow with the children. This is to-day no fit
place for babes. Come--let me find you Haifa. Nay, do not go in again.
The old man is mad. He sees red. There is the lust of blood in his
eyes! Hasten!”
And as we went round the little cottage of the Three Thorns there came
from the interior, hoarse and terrible to hear, the cursing of the
smith--
“Man and boy, threescore years and three have I, Malise M‘Kim, served
the Douglases, but I will serve them no more! They have taken all from
me that I gave them--all--self and sons and years a-many. One little
ewe lamb was for myself. I kept her. She was as the children of Mary
the Virgin, as the little ones who scattered the palm branches in the
way for Mary’s Son, sweet and lovely and innocent. She was unto me--to
me alone. Freely I gave my sons to the Douglas. I gave them to the
death. But this white lamb, sole of the fold, born out of her due
time, I held nestled safe--as I thought--within these old arms! And
now, by the God that put strength in these wrists and anger in this
heart, I will hate even as I have loved. Honey is turned to gall!
Service to a hunting with dogs! I will bring down this dark house--I
will level it with the ground for what it hath wrought--God be my
witness!”
At this point I could hear Sholto’s voice say something, but the words
I could not hear.
“Come away, Margaret,” said Maud, striving to draw me out of the reach
of that terrible malediction; “this is not fit for you to hear!”
“Nay,” I answered, “let me stay. Part is for me, is it not? Am not I a
Douglas? Did not you yourself say that a woman must go with her
husband?--_ah, her husband!_”
At this moment I could hear Malise break away from his eldest son with
a kind of roar like that of a wild beast.
“No, by Him and His hosts, I will not!” he shouted, in answer to some
appeal. “Stand away from me, boy, or you shall die by the hand of the
father that begat you! I care not though I have served six Douglases,
all of them good men. They are dead, and gone to their own place. But
this--this coward--nay, even now I will give him his dues. James of
Douglas is no coward with his hands, but only with his heart and with
his soul! Yet he--my master--that I thought to serve and to die
serving, hath done this shame unto me! Out of the way, boy! I will go
to the king--ay, Stewart though he be! I will go to Crichton. I will
go to my Lord Angus. He at least is a Douglas, if he hath not the pith
of a peeled willow wand. But I swear it, though James Douglas were as
strong as Thrieve, and carried in his veins all the blood of all the
thirty lords of the Black House, I would bring him down. I would slay
him. The curse of Malise the smith be on every Douglas, small and
great, that hath in their veins a drop of the blood of Avondale. Nay,
you mistake. I said ‘of Avondale.’ The poor Maid of Galloway, little
Margaret--no, I do not curse her. She, at least, hath done nothing
amiss, and the blow falls heavy also upon her. It was an ill-done
thing to fear her, being as she is. But, if I know the Douglas
blood--if I know the sister of William and David, who died in
Edinburgh, she will hold still to the man who hath done the
wrong--because he is her husband, because he also is a Douglas. So
shall the curse of Malise also fall slantwise upon her--the curse of
the old man left daughterless, the curse of him that had but one ewe
lamb, and now--_hath her not!_”
Sholto had come out, knowing by some instinct the nearness of Maud, or
perhaps our need of him.
“For the present I can do nothing with my father,” he said. “It is
useless. There is indeed no need for me there. Gladly will I ride with
our dear lady, and do you follow after, Maud, my wife!”
So, ever gentle and kind, and of a nature at all times to be depended
on, was Sholto M‘Kim--like him there was none among the knights in any
hall of king or prince the world over.
So as he and I went gently up the green brae, we could see Maud
gathering the babes about her. They came coursing to her knee like
greyhounds to the call, leaping upon her, shrieking in their joy. But
when we paused at the top, lo! she had gotten them calmed by some
grave word. Doubtless they were already making their preparations for
returning to Thrieve. A sedate little company they made, walking
cottagewards--Maud in the midst, a bairn clinging to either hand, the
twins holding her gown, and the tall Marcelle, walking discreet and
downcast, a little to one side.
Ah, it would have been easier for Maud--that which I had to endure.
She had so much--so many, rather. She was buttressed against fate.
These babes were all hers. But I had--_what?_
It turned me cold to think what.
And there, looking back from the top of the hill, the little white
cottage with the flowers showed white as ever in the sun. Who could
have guessed that the folk therein, old and young, would never again
be glad with the ancient gladness, never loyal with the old
loyalty--never the same as the day before, separated for ever from
those who had been to them at once masters and friends. Even when
Death had set his foot on the anthill, and all these human creatures
had been stamped back into clay, the blue above would never again be
as innocent and clear, nor the white clouds as pure and glad and
billowy as they had been--yesterday! Hardly even then would these
human hates and human pains have an end. For what is the hell the
priests speak of, save the Evil growing ever more evil, from
everlasting to everlasting--even as the good and the godlike and the
unselfish shall flourish for aye in the paradise, the Garden Inclosed
of God.
* * * * * * *
Of that ride with Sholto I remember scarcely anything. Haifa had been
chafing, as was her custom, and when we left the Carlinwark and turned
our faces towards the tall tower which was Thrieve, I had a difficulty
in holding her in--which perhaps was as good for me as anything else.
“We shall soon be home!” said Sholto, for once making a mistake which
a woman would not have made--at least, I know Maud would not.
An _éclat_ of laughter took hold of me--scornful, bitter as one that
awakes with the taste of gall in his mouth.
“Home!” I cried; “home! Ah, you have said it, Sholto lad! Yonder is my
dear home! I will hasten thither. My husband will be waiting for me!”
It was cruel, too cruel to speak thus. But, before God, I could not
help it; and that which followed is my complete excuse. I leave it to
women to judge, to men also. Half mad, I set my white Arabian to the
gallop, and, nothing loth, he took the fenland and the knowes of
heather, the deep matted ditches, and soft peaty common lands in his
stride. He dashed through the ford of Dee without waiting for the
drawbridge, and I laughed at young A’Cormick, who came to the door of
his guard-hut in amaze. Yes, I laughed, and tossed my hand at him
mockingly. I was not in my right mind.
Then, as Haifa stopped, all foaming and breathless, at the great gate
of Thrieve, I slipped down to the ground in a dead faint. I remember
no more; but I know that I lay there till Sholto--who, to keep me in
sight, had almost killed his heavier charger in the bogs and marl-pits
betwixt Carlinwark and the castle--lifted me up and bore me in. For my
poor Haifa--she at least faithful--had stood quite still beside me,
doing me no harm, only snuffing, and blowing her white foam upon me in
a kind of dumb protest and wonderment.
* * * * * * *
And when I awoke it was as from death. Ah, that I had been indeed
dead! All the pleasure I have known since cannot make up for the pain
of that moment.
Maud was sitting beside me. The race of the Douglases of the Black was
of a truth extinct. But at least I was free from James Douglas. His
babe and mine was dead--dead, as if slain by his hand. I read it in
Maud’s eyes.
I think I sighed a long sigh, and shut mine eyes again.
“_Better so!_”
That was the thought which arose within me.