COQUETTE BEGINS TO FEAR.
"Uncle," said Coquette, directly they had returned to the yacht,
"when shall we go back to Airlie?"
The Minister looked up in a surprised and dazed way from his MSS.,
and said--
"Go back?--yes--I have been thinking of that too--for it is not
fitting that one should be away from the duties to which one has been
called. But you--don't you understand that it is for your sake we
are here? Are you so much better? What does Lady Drum say?"
The Minister had now so far recalled himself from the sermon on Jonah
that he could attentively scan his niece's face.
"Why," said he, "you are more pale--more languid--now than I have
seen you for many days. Will not a little more of the sea-air make
you feel strong?"
"I am not unwell," said Coquette, with the same air of restraint;
"but if it will please you to go farther with the yacht, then I will
go too."
So she went away to her own cabin, fearing to go on deck and meet
Lord Earlshope. In their common state-room she encountered Lady Drum.
"You two were deeply occupied," she said, with a grave and kindly
smile, "when ye forgathered on the beach."
"Yes," said Coquette, with an anxious haste, "I did speak to Lord
Earlshope about my cousin in Glasgow."
"It must have been an interesting subject, for ye never took your
eyes from watching the toe of your boot, which was peeping from under
your dress; and he, I am sure, would not have noticed a man-of-war
had it come round the point. Dear, dear me! I willna scold you; but
to come so soon, ye know, after your poor cousin left ye----."
"No, no, no!" said Coquette, hurriedly, as she took her friend's hand
in hers; "you must not talk like that. You do not know that I have
just been to my uncle to ask him to go home."
Lady Drum began to look more serious. She had been bantering the
young girl in the fashion that most elderly people love; but she had
no idea that she was actually hitting the mark. This sudden wish on
the part of Coquette to return to Airlie--what could it mean?
Considerably startled, the old lady saw for the first time that there
was real danger ahead; and she asked Coquette to sit down and have a
talk with her, in a voice so solemn that Coquette was alarmed, and
refused.
"No," she said, "I will not talk. It is nothing. You imagine more
than is true. All that I wish is to leave this voyage when it
pleases you and my uncle."
But Lady Drum was not to be gainsaid; she felt it to be her duty to
warn Coquette. Lord Earlshope, she said, was a man whom it was
necessary to understand. He had been accustomed to luxurious
indolence all his days, and might drift into a position which would
compromise more than himself. He had a dangerous habit of regarding
himself as a study, and experimenting on himself, without reflecting
that others might suffer. Then, again, he had so resolutely avoided
introductions to rich and charming young ladies who had visited
Castle Cawmil, that she--Lady Drum--was convinced he had some rooted
aversion to the consideration of marriage--that he would never marry.
"Have ye never heard him talk about marriage, and the mistakes that
young men make? He is as bitter about that as if he was an old man
of sixty, or as if he had made a foolish marriage himself. Perhaps
he has," she continued, with a smile; "but his success in concealing
it all these years must be a credit to him."
"All that does not concern me," said Coquette, with a sort of piteous
deprecation in her tone. "Why do you speak to me about Lord
Earlshope's marriage? I do not care if he has been in fifty
marriages."
"Will you tell me why you are suddenly anxious to go home?" said Lady
Drum, bending her grave and kind eyes upon the girl.
"I have told you," said Coquette, with a touch of hauteur in her
voice, as she turned abruptly away and walked out.
She stood at the foot of the companion-steps. Which way should she
choose? Overhead she heard Lord Earlshope talking to the skipper,
who was getting the yacht under canvas to resume the voyage. In the
saloon sat her uncle, deep in the intricacies of Scotch theology.
Behind her was the elderly lady from whom she had just broken away
with a gesture of indignant pride. For a minute or two she remained
irresolute, though the firmness of her lips showed that she was still
smarting from what she had considered an unwarrantable interference.
Then she went gently back to the state-room door, opened it, walked
over to where Lady Drum sat, and knelt down penitently and put her
head in her lap.
"I hope you are not angry or offended with me," she said, in a low
voice. "I am very sorry. I would tell you what you ask, but it is
not my secret, Lady Drum; I must not, indeed, tell you. It is
because you are so good a friend that you ask; but--but--but it is no
matter; and will you help me to go back soon to Airlie?"
"Help you?--yes, I will," said Lady Drum, in the same kindly way,
although it was but natural she should feel a little hurt at having
her curiosity baffled. She put her hand in a gracious and stately
fashion on the young girl's head, and said: "You have a right to keep
your own secrets if you choose; far be it from me to ask you to give
them up. But should you want to confide in a person who has some
experience o' life, and is anxious to do ye every service, you have
but to come to me."
"Oh, I am sure of that," said Coquette, gratefully. "I will be as
your own daughter to you."
"And about this going back," continued Lady Drum. "It would look
strange to turn at this point, just after letting your cousin go home
by himself. We shall have the best part o' the thing over in a
couple o' days, when we get up to Skye; and then, if ye like, we can
go back by the steamer."
"Two more days!" said Coquette, almost wildly, as she started to her
feet--"two more days! How can I bear----"
She caught herself up and was silent.
"There is something in all this that ye keep back," said Lady Drum.
"I do not blame ye; but when it suits ye to be more frank wi' me ye
will no find yourself wi' a backward friend. Now we will go upon the
deck and see what's to the fore."
Coquette was glad to go on deck under this safe-conduct. Yet what
had she to fear? Lord Earlshope had made a certain communication to
her with the obvious belief that she would treat it as a matter of no
importance to herself. Was she not, according to his own account,
surrounded by a halo of self-content which made her independent of
the troubles which afflicted others?
"But I am not selfish," she had bitterly thought to herself as they
were driving back to Oban. "Why should he think I have no more
feeling than a statue or a picture? Is it that the people of this
country do not understand it if you are comfortable and careless for
the moment?"
When they now went on deck Lord Earlshope came forward as though he
had utterly forgotten that conversation on the beach at Dunstaffnage,
and placed Coquette and her companion in a position so that they
could see the bay, and the houses, and the rocks of Dunolly, which
they were now leaving behind. Coquette bade good-bye to Oban with
but little regret. Perhaps she was chiefly thinking that in a few
minutes they would come in sight of that curved indentation of the
coast which would remind Lord Earlshope of what had happened there.
And, indeed, as they stood away over towards the Sound of Mull, with
the dark mountains of Morven in the north, and the blue waters of the
Atlantic stretching far into the south, they actually came in sight
of those tiny bays which they had visited in the morning.
"Do you recognise the place?" asked Lord Earlshope, carelessly, of
Lady Drum.
Then he turned to Coquette and bade her admire the beautiful and soft
colours of the Morven hills, where the sunlight brought out the warm
tints of the rusty bracken and the heather, through the pearly grey
of the mist and the heat.
"It is very lonely," said Coquette, looking wistfully round the far
shores; "I do not see any sign of life among those mountains or near
the sea."
"You would not enjoy a long visit to these places," said Earlshope,
with a smile. "I imagine that the constant sight of the loneliness
of the mountains would make you miserable. Does not the sea look sad
to you? I have fancied I noticed a sense of relief on your face when
we have settled down in the evening to a comfortable chat in the
saloon, and have shut out for the night the water, and the solitary
hills, and the sky."
She did not answer; nor could she understand how he spoke to her
thus, with absolute freedom of tone and manner. Had she dreamed all
that had happened under the ruined walls of Dunstaffnage? She only
knew that he was looking at her with his accustomed look of mingled
curiosity and interest; and that he was, as usual, telling her of his
speculations as regarded herself. Or was he only assuming this ease
of manner to dissipate her fears and restore their old relations?
Was he only feigning indifference in order to remove her constraint?
It was not until the afternoon, when they had gone up through the
Sound of Mull, and were drawing near to their anchorage in Tobermory
Bay, that he had an opportunity of speaking to her alone. Lady Drum
had gone below, and Coquette suddenly found herself defenceless.
"Come, Miss Cassilis," he said, "have it out with me now. You have
been avoiding me all day, to punish me for my foolish disclosure of
this morning. Is that the case? Did I commit a blunder? If I did,
you must pardon me; I did not fancy you would have wasted a second
thought on the matter. And, indeed, I cannot afford to have you
vexed by my indiscretion; it is not natural for you to look vexed."
"If I am vexed," she said, looking down, and yet speaking rather
warmly, "it is to hear you speak of me so. You do seem to think me
incapable of caring for any one but myself; you think I should not be
human; not interested in my friends, but always thinking of myself;
always pleased; always with one look, like a picture. It is not
true. I am grieved when my friends are grieved--I cannot be
satisfied and pleased when they are in trouble."
"Surely you have no need to tell me that," he said. "When your face
is clouded with cares, I know they are not your cares, and that you
are far too ready to accept the burden of other people's worries.
But I maintain you have no right to do so. It is your business--your
duty--to be pleased, satisfied, contented; to make other people happy
by looking at your happiness. It is natural to you to be happy.
Why, then, should you for a moment suffer yourself to be annoyed by
what I told you this morning? I see I made a mistake. You must
forget it. I fancied I might talk to you about it without its
troubling you more than the looking at a new vessel on the horizon
would trouble you----"
"And you believe me, therefore," she said, with some indignation in
her voice, "a mere doll--a baby--incapable of understanding the real
human anxieties around me? Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I do not
care for anything but my own pleasure; but it is not flattery to tell
me so."
With that she walked away from him and rejoined Lady Drum, who had
again come on deck. Earlshope had no further chance of speaking a
word to her. At dinner, in the evening, Coquette was silent, and her
face was downcast and troubled. When she spoke, it was to Lady Drum,
towards whom she was obediently and almost piteously attentive.