Chapter XXIX: 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!"