Chapter XXIII: 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.