COQUETTE'S DREAMS.
The Whaup went over to the sofa, and knelt down on one knee, and took
Coquette's hand.
"Coquette," said he, forgetting to call her by any other name, "are
you ill yet? Why are you so pale? Why did they tell me you were
almost better?"
She was pale no longer. A quick flush of surprise and delight sprang
to her face when she saw him enter; and there was a new life and
pleasure in her eyes as she said rapidly:
"You are come all the way from Glasgow to see me? I was thinking of
you, and trying to make a picture of Glasgow in the coal and flames
of the fire; and I had begun to wonder when you would come back; and
whether it would be a surprise--and--and--I did think I did hear
something in the snow outside, and it was really you? And how well
you look, Tom," she added, with her dark eyes full of a subtle
tenderness and joy regarding the young man's handsome and glowing
face; "and how big and strong you are; but, do you know, you seem to
be a great deal older? You have been working very hard, Tom? Ah, I
do know! And you have come to stay for a while? And what sort of a
house have you been living in? And what sort of a place is Glasgow?
Sit down on the hearthrug and tell me all about it!"
She spoke quite rapidly, and, in her gladness and excitement, she
tried to raise herself up a bit. The Whaup instantly offered her his
assistance, and propped up the cushions on which her head rested.
But why did he not speak? He did not answer one of her questions.
He looked at her in a vague and sad way, as if she were somehow
remote, and she fancied she saw a tremor about his lips. Then he
said suddenly, with a sharpness which startled her:
"Why was I not told? Why did they make light of it? What have they
been doing to let you get as ill as this?"
He rose and turned with a frown on his face, as if to accuse
Leezibeth of being the cause of the girl's illness. Leezibeth had
quietly slipped out of the room.
"What does that woman mean by persecuting you with her texts?" he
asked.
Coquette reached out her hand, and brought him down to his old
position beside her.
"You must not say anything against Leesibess; she is my very good
friend, and so kind that she does not know how to serve me. And you
must not look angry like that, or I shall be afraid of you; you seem
so much greater and older than you were, and I have no longer any
control over you, as I did use to have when you were a boy, you know."
The Whaup laughed, and sat down on the hearthrug beside her. The
fire heightened the warm glow of his face, and touched here and there
the brown masses of curling hair; but it was clear that some
firmness, and perhaps a touch of sadness had been added to the lad's
expression during those few months he had been away from home. There
was a gravity in his voice, too, which had replaced the buoyant
carelessness of old.
"It is comfortable to be near one's own fire, and to see you again,
Coquette," said he.
"It is miserable away in Glasgow?" she said. "This morning, when I
saw the snow, I thought of you in the drear town, and did wonder what
you were doing. It is Sunday, I said, he will go to church in the
morning, and then he will go outside the town for a walk all by
himself. He will go through the great gate, and under the big walls.
All the trees on the side of the fortifications will be bare and
heavy with snow; and the people that pass along the boulevards
outside the walls will be muffled up and cold. In the gardens of the
_cafés_ the wooden benches will be wet and deserted. Then I see you
walk twice round the town, and go in again by the gate. You go home,
you have dinner, you take a book--perhaps it is the French Testament
I gave you--and you think of us here at Airlie. And when you sit
like that do you think of the sea, and the old church up here, and
the moor; and do you see us as clearly as I can see you, and could
you speak to me if only the words would carry?"
He listened as if he were listening to the record of a dream; and,
strangely enough, it coincided with many a dream that he had dreamt
by himself in the solitude of his Glasgow lodgings.
"What a curious notion of Glasgow you have," he said. "You seem to
think it is like a French town. There are no fortifications. There
are no walls, no boulevards round the place, nor public gardens with
benches. There is a close network of streets in the middle, and
these lose themselves, on the one side, in great masses of public
works and chimneys that stretch out into dirty fields that are sodden
with smoke, and, on the other side, into suburbs where the rich
people have big houses. There is nothing in the way of ramparts, or
moats, or fortifications; but there is a cannon in the West-End Park."
"There is a park, then? It is not all houses and chimneys?"
"There are two parks that let you see nearly down to Airlie. On the
clear days I go up to the highest point and look away down here, and
wonder if I could call to Coquette, and if she would hear."
"You do think of me sometimes, then?" said she, with the dark eyes
grown wistful and a trifle sad.
Had he not thought of her! What was it that seemed to sweeten his
life in the great and weary city but tender memories of the girl away
down in that moorland nook? In the time of constant rain, when the
skies were dark, and the roaring traffic of the streets ploughed its
way through sludge and mud, he thought of one spot over which, in his
imagination, there dwelt perpetual sunshine and a blue sky. When he
was sick of the noise and the smoke--sick, too, of the loneliness of
the great city--he could think of the girl far away, whose face was
as pure and sweet as a lily in springtime; and the very memory of her
seemed to lighten his dull little room, and bring a fragrance to it.
Did not Airlie lie in the direction of the sunset? Many a time, when
he had gone out from the town to the heights of Maryhill or Billhead,
the cloudy and wintry afternoon broke into a fierce mass of fire away
along the western horizon; and he loved to think that Coquette was
catching that glare of yellow light, and that she was looking over
the moor towards Arran and the sea. All the sweet influences of life
hovered around Airlie; there seemed to be always sunshine there. And
when he went back into the gloom of the city it was with a glad
heart; for he had got a glimpse of the favoured land down in the
west; and if you had been walking behind a tall and stalwart lad,
whose shoulders were as flat as a board, and whose brown hair was in
considerable profusion round a face that was full of courage, and
hope, and health, you would have heard him sing, high over the roar
of the carts and the carriages, the tune of "Drumclog"--heeding
little whether any one was listening to his not very melodious voice.
"You must have been much worse than they told me," he said gravely.
"But I am getting very well now," said Coquette, with a smile, "and I
am anxious to be quite better, for they did spoil me here. I do not
like to be an invalid."
"No," said the Whaup, "I suppose you'd rather be scampering about
like a wild pony over the moor, flinging snowballs, and shouting with
laughter."
"I did not know that the wild pony was good at snowballs or at
laughing," said Coquette. "But you have not told me anything about
Glasgow. What you do there? Have you seen Lady Drum since she went
away from here, after being very kind to me? How do you like the
college?"
"All that is of no consequence," said the Whaup. "I did not come
here to talk about myself. I came to see you, and find out for
myself why you were remaining so long indoors."
"But I do desire you to talk about yourself," said Coquette, with
something of her old imperiousness of manner.
"I shan't," said the Whaup. "I have grown older than you since I
went to Glasgow, and I am not to be ordered about. Besides,
Coquette, I haven't above half an hour more to stay."
"You do not go away to-day?" said Coquette, with alarm in her face.
"I go away in less than half an hour, or my father will be home. Not
a human being must know that I have come to Airlie to-day. I mean to
exact a solemn vow from Leezibeth."
"It is wicked--it is wrong," said Coquette.
"Why not say it is a beastly shame, as you used to do?" asked the
Whaup.
"Because I have been reading much since I am ill, and have learned
much English," said Coquette; and then she proceeded with her prayers
and entreaties that he should remain at least over the day.
But the Whaup was inexorable. He had fulfilled the object of his
mission; and would depart without anybody being a bit the wiser. He
had seen Coquette again; had listened to her tender voice; and
assured himself that she was really convalescent and in good spirits.
So they chatted in the old familiar fashion--as if they were boy and
girl together. But all the time Coquette was regarding him, and
trying to say to herself what the inexpressible something was which
had made a difference in the Whaup's manner. He was not downcast--on
the contrary, he talked to her in the frank, cheerful, abrupt way
which she knew of old; and yet there was a touch of determination, of
seriousness, and decision which had been quite recently acquired. In
the mere outward appearance of his face, too, was there not some
alteration?
"Oh, Tom!" she cried, suddenly, "you have got whiskers."
"What if I have?" he said coolly. "Are you sorry, Miss Coquette,
that nature has denied to woman that manly ornament?"--and he stroked
with satisfaction the dusky golden down which was on his cheeks.
"I do believe," said Coquette, "you did come from Glasgow to show me
your whiskers."
"You don't seem to admire them as much as you ought to," he remarked.
"Yet there are many men would give something for these, though they
are young as yet."
"Oh, you vain boy!" said Coquette. "I am ashamed of you. And your
fashionable cuffs, too--you are not a proper student. You ought to
be pale, and gloomy, with shabby clothes, and a hungry face. But you
have no links in your cuffs, Tom," she added, rather shyly. "Would
you let me--would you accept from me as a present a pair I have got?"
"And go back to college with a pair of girl's links in my sleeves!"
said the Whaup.
"But they are quite the same," said Coquette. "It will give me great
pleasure if you will take them."
She rang for Leezibeth, and bade her go up to her room and fetch
those bits of jewellery; and when Leezibeth came back with them
Coquette would herself put them in her cousin's sleeves--an operation
which, from her recumbent position, she effected with a little
difficulty. As the Whaup looked at these pretty ornaments--four
small and dark-green cameos set in an old-fashioned circle of
delicately twisted gold wire--he said--
"I wonder you have left yourself anything, Coquette. You are always
giving away something or other. I think it is because you are so
perfect and happy in yourself, that you don't need to care for
anything else."
The girl's face flushed slightly with evident pleasure; but she said--
"If you do call me 'Coquette,' I will call you 'The Whaup.'"
"Who told you to call me that?"
"I have heard it often. Yet it is not fair. You are not any more a
wild boy, but a student and a man. Neither am I 'Coquette.'"
Yet at this very moment the deceitful young creature was trying her
best to make him forget the peril he was in. She knew that if the
people returning from church were to find him in the house, his
secret would be lost, and he would be forced to remain. So she
talked and questioned him without ceasing, and had made him
altogether forget that time was passing rapidly, when suddenly there
was a noise somewhere.
"By Jove!" said the Whaup, "they have come back. I must bolt out by
the garden and get over the wall. Good-bye, Coquette--get well soon,
and come up to see me in Glasgow!"
He darted out, and met Leezibeth in the passage. He had only time to
adjure her not to say he had been there, and then he got quickly
through to the back-door. In rushing forth he fairly ran against his
brother Wattie, and unintentionally sent him flying into an immense
heap of soft snow which Andrew had swept along the path; but the
Whaup did not pause to look at his brother wriggling out, blinded and
bewildered, from the snowdrift. He dashed through the garden, took
hold of a pear-tree, clambered on to the wall, and dropped into the
snow-covered meadow outside. He had escaped.
But Wattie, when he came to himself, was struck with a great fear.
He ran into the house, and into the parlour, almost speechless
between sobbing and terror, as he blurted out--
"Oh, Leezibeth! oh, Leezibeth! the deil has been in the house. It
was the deil himsel'--and he was fleeing out at the back-door--and he
flung me into the snaw--and then gaed up into the air, wi' a crack
like thunder. It was the deil himsel', Leezibeth--what'll I dae?
what'll I dae?"
"Havers, havers, havers," cried Leezibeth, taking him by the
shoulders, and bundling him out of the room, "do ye think the deil
would meddle wi' you? Gang butt the house, and take the snaw off
your claithes, and let the deil alane! Ma certes--a pretty pass if
we are to be frightened out o' our senses because a laddie tumbles in
the snaw!"