Chapter XII: Coquette's Conquests

There ensued a long period of rain--day after day breaking sullen and cold, with a perpetual drizzle falling from a grey and cheerless sky. There were none of the sharp and heavy showers which a south-west gale brings, with dashes of blue between; but a slow, fine, wetting rain, that rendered everything humid and limp, and hid the far-off line of the sea and the mountains of Arran behind a curtain of mist.

Perhaps it was the forced imprisonment caused by the rain that made Coquette look ill; but, at all events, she grew so pale and listless that even the boys noticed it. All her former spirits were gone. She was no longer interested in their sports; and taught them no more new games. She kept much to her own room, and read at a window. She read those books which she had brought with her from the sunny region of the Loire; and when she turned from the open page to look out upon the wet and misty landscape all around, she came back again with a sigh to the volume on her knee.

Lord Earlshope never came near the Manse; perhaps, she thought, he had left the country. The only communication she had with him was on the day following their last meeting. She then sent him a note consisting of but one line, which was--"Please do not call your boat _Coquette_." This missive she had entrusted to her cousin Wattie, who delivered it, and returned with the answer that Lord Earlshope had merely said "All right." Wattie, however, broke the confidence reposed in him; and told his brothers that he had been sent with a message to Earlshope. The Whaup profited by this intelligence; but punished Wattie all the same; for on that night, Coquette heard murmurings and complainings underneath her window. She looked out. There was some starlight; and she could indistinctly see a figure in white moving in the garden underneath that building, the upper storey of which, originally a hay-loft, had been transformed into a dormitory for the boys. The cause of the disturbance soon became apparent. After the boys had undressed, the Whaup had wheedled or compelled Wattie into making a rush to the garden for some fruit. He had then taken advantage of his position to pull the ladder into the loft, by which mean device his brother was left standing below in his night-shirt. In vain Wattie petitioned to be let up to his bed. With his teeth chattering in his head, he entreated that at least his trousers might be flung down to him; but he was not relieved from punishment until the Whaup had administered a severe lecture to him on the shabbiness of betraying a lady's confidence.

"I'll never do't again, as sure's I'm here!" said Wattie, who was feebly endeavouring to mitigate his sufferings by balancing himself on his toes--a feat in which he naturally failed.

"Since it is no likely to rain," said the Whaup, looking spitefully at the clear star-lit sky, "there is little use in keeping ye there, so ye may hae the ladder--ye sneak!"

The Whaup never spoke to Coquette about that letter; but it was the occasion of his prolonging the estrangement which he had sternly decided upon. He deliberately ignored her presence. He would not complain of her keeping up what he imagined to be a clandestine correspondence; neither would he take any steps to put an end to it. He contented himself with thinking that if ever there should be necessity for confronting Earlshope personally, and altering matters that way, there would be one person in the Manse ready to adventure something for the sake of Coquette.

Nevertheless, it was at this time, and it was through the Whaup's instrumentality, that Coquette achieved her first great victory in Airlie--a success which was but the beginning of a strange series of successes, and fraught with important consequences to her. It all fell about in this way. First, the Whaup relented. When the rain began, and he saw his French cousin mope and pine indoors--when he saw how she was growing languid and listless, and still strove to be cheerful and amiable to those around her, his resolve broke down. By insensible degrees he tried to re-establish their old relations. He showed her little attentions, and performed towards her small acts of thoughtfulness and kindness, which she was not slow to acknowledge. He was not impudently and patronisingly good to her as he had been; there was a certain restraint over his approaches; but she met them all with that simplicity of gratitude which the dark eyes and the sweet face could so readily and effectually express when her imperfect English failed her. And the Whaup no longer corrected her blunders with his old scornful impatience.

One morning there was a temporary cessation of the rain.

"Why don't you go down and return the Pensioner's visit?" said the Whaup to Coquette.

"If you please, I will go."

For the first time for many a day these two went out of the Manse together. It was like a revival of old times--though the Whaup would not have believed you had you told him how short a space Coquette had actually lived in Airlie. The cold and damp wind brought a tinge of colour to the girl's cheeks; the Whaup thought he had never seen her look so pleasant and charming.

While Coquette lingered in the small garden of the cottage, the Whaup went up to the door and told the Pensioner who had come to see him.

"Cot pless me!" he hastily exclaimed, looking down at his legs. "Keep her in sa garden till I change my breeks."

"What for?" said the Whaup.

"Dinna ye see sey are tartan!" cried Neil, in an excited whisper, "and sa French canna stand sa tartan."

"Nonsense!" said the Whaup. "She won't look at your trousers."

"It is no nonsense, but very good sense whatever," said the Highlandman; "it wass two friends o' mine, and they went over to France sa very last year, and one o' them, sey took his bags and his luggage, and sey pulled sis way and sat way, and sey will sweer at him in French--but he will not know what it wass said to him--and sey will take many things from him, mirover, and he will not know why. But, said I to him, 'Tonald, will you have on your tartan plaid round your shoulders?" And says he, 'I had.' And said I to him, 'Did you will no ken how sa French canna stand sa tartan ever since Waterloo?'"

The Pensioner ran inside, and speedily re-appeared in plain grey. Then he came out, and bade Coquette welcome with a dignified courtesy that surprised her.

"You would not come to see me, so I have come to see you," she said to the old man.

"It wassna for the likes o' me to visit a letty," said Neil.

He dusted a chair with his sleeve, and asked her to sit down. Then he put three glasses on the table, and brought out a black bottle. He filled one of the glasses and offered it to Coquette.

"She canna drink whisky!" said the Whaup, with a rude laugh.

"It is sa rale Lagavulin," said Neil, indignantly, "and wouldna harm a flee."

Coquette put the glass to her lips, and then placed it on the table.

"Ye may drink it up, mem," said Neil. "Do ye ken that ye can drink sa goot whisky until ye stagger, and it will do ye no harm in sa morning? I do pelieve it is sa finest sing in the world's universe--a gran' good stagger as ye will go home in sa night."

"You have been in battle?" said Coquette, by way of changing the conversation.

"Oh, yes, mem," said Neil, looking desperately uncomfortable. "It wass--it wass--it wass in a war."

"Have you been in more than one war?" she asked.

"No, mem--yes, mem," stammered Neil, in great embarrassment, as he glanced to see that his tartan trousers were well shoved under the bed; "but it is of no matter how many wars. It will pe all over pefore you were porn--never mind about sa wars."

"I hear you were at Waterloo?" said Coquette, innocently.

The Pensioner jumped to his feet.

"Who wass it tellt you of Waterloo?" said he, in great indignation. "I never heard sa like! It wass a shame--and I would not take a hundred pounds and forget mysel' like sat. And you will be blaming us Hielanders for what we did--and we did a goot teal there--but there wass others too. There wass English there too. And the French--sey fought well, as every one o' us will tell ye; and I wouldna sink too much o't; for maype it isna true sat Napoleon died on sa island. Didna he come pack pefore?"

Having offered Coquette this grain of comfort, Neil hastily escaped from the subject by getting his violin and beginning to screw up the strings.

"I have been learning a lot of your Scotch airs," said Coquette, "and I have become very fond of some of them--the sad ones especially. But I suppose you prefer the lively ones for the violin."

"I can play sem all every one together," said Neil, proudly. "I do not play sem well, but I know all our music--every one."

"You play a great deal?"

"No," said Neil, fondling his violin affectionately, "I do not play sa fiddle much, but I like to be aye playing."

There was a touch of pathos in the reply which did not escape the delicate perception of his guest. She looked at the old man, at his scanty grey hair and dazed eyes, and was glad that he had this constant companion to amuse and interest him. He did not like to play much--to make a labour of this recreation; but he liked to have the whine of the tight strings always present to his ear.

He played her a selection of his best airs, with many an apology. He chatted about the tunes too, and told tales concerning them, until he was as familiar with the young lady as though he had known her a lifetime; and she was laughing at his odd stories more than she had laughed for many a day. At last she said--

"That 'Flowers of the Forest' is a beautiful air, but you want it harmonised. Will you come up to the Manse now, and I will play it for you? I have been trying it much lately."

So the Pensioner walked up to the Manse with them; and soon found himself in Coquette's parlour. His hostess remembered how she had been received, and went into the room adjoining for a second or two. When she returned there was a small bottle in her hand.

"This is some French brandy which my old nurse gave me when I left, in case I should be ill at sea; you see I have not even opened the bottle."

The Whaup got a corkscrew and a glass, and soon had half a tumblerful of the brandy to offer to Neil. The Pensioner looked at it, smelt it, said "Slainte!" and--to the horror of Coquette--gulped it down. The next moment his face was a mass of moving muscles--twisting and screwing into every expression of agony, while he gasped and choked, and could only say, "Water!--water!" But when the Whaup quickly poured him out a glass of water he regarded it at arm's length for a second, and then put it away.

"No," he said, with his face still screwed up to agony pitch, "I can thole."

Coquette did not understand what had happened; but when her cousin, with unbecoming frankness, explained to her that the Pensioner would rather "thole" (or suffer) the delicious torture in his throat than spoil it with water, she was nearly joining in the Whaup's impudent mirth.

But the brandy had no perceptible effect on Neil. He sat and listened sedately to the music she played; and it was only when his enthusiasm was touched that he broke out with some exclamation of delight. At length the old man left--the Whaup also going away to those exceptional studies which had been recently imposed on him as a condition of his remaining at Airlie.

Coquette sat alone at the piano. The grey day was darkening to the afternoon; and the rain had begun again its wearisome patter on the pane. She had French music before her--bright and laughing songs of the bygone and happy time--but she could not sing them. Almost unconsciously to herself, she followed the wanderings of her fancy in the dreamland of that old and plaintive music that she had recently discovered. Now it was "The Lowlands o' Holland"; again it was "Helen of Kirkconnell"; again it was "Logan Braes" that filled the room with its sadness; until she came back to "The Flowers of the Forest." She sang a verse of it--merely out of caprice, to see if she could master the pronunciation--and just as she had finished the door was opened, and Leezibeth stood there.

Coquette turned from the piano with a sigh: doubtless Leezibeth had appeared to prefer some complaint.

The woman came up to her and said--with the most painful shamefacedness clouding her look--

"Will ye sing that again, Miss, if it is no much trouble to ye? Maybe ye'll no ken that me and Andrew had a boy--a bit laddie that dee'd when he was but seven years auld--and--and he used to sing the 'Flowers o' the Forest' afore a' the ither songs, and ye sing it that fine that if it didna mak a body amaist like to greet----"

She never ended the sentence; but the girl sang the rest of the song; and the woman stood silent, with her eyes turned to the grey evening outside. And from that day Leezibeth was the slave of Coquette.