Chapter XXXVI: The Last Day at Airlie

All during that evening, and in thinking of the next morning, she nursed a sweet and strange poison at her heart. Love seemed no longer to be so terrible as on that ghostly evening in Loch Scavaig; and she grew accustomed to the danger; and she was glad that, come what might, this flower of life had at length fallen upon her and she knew its fragrance. Had she not been told, in many of those old stories, that love for love's sake was enough? She did not care to count its cost. She scarcely paid any heed as to how it might end. Sufficient to know that now, at this moment, her heart was beating wildly against its prison-bars; and would fain have taken wings and flown over the moor towards Earlshope, if only to die on finding a haven.

Nor was there much disquiet in her look the next morning when she rose and discovered that another bright and clear day had come to mark her farewell to Airlie. She was hurried and excited, perhaps, in preparing to go out, but she was joyful, too; and the early morning sunshine, streaming in through the small window, found her eyes full of gladness and hope.

Yet how was she to communicate with Lord Earlshope, and let him know that she wished to say good-bye to him? Clearly, neither her uncle nor Lady Drum knew that he had returned. She dared not send him a message; and equally impossible was it for her to go up alone to the house. Her hope was that he would be on the watch for her; and that another stolen interview would mark the last day she had for the present to spend at Airlie.

She was not mistaken in that vague surmise. When she went out for her accustomed stroll, she had wandered but a little way when she found him approaching her. His look was anxious; but hers was full of affection and trust.

"You are no longer alarmed to see me?" he asked, wondering.

"No," she said. "Why should I? Perhaps I ought not to meet you in this way; but it will not be for long. And you--you seem to have dropped from the clouds."

"I was on my way to the Manse."

"To the Manse!" she repeated, in some dismay.

"Yes. Do you know any reason why I should not call upon your uncle? I dared not go near the place until I had assured myself I should not be annoying you. And now I hope to be able to call and see you there, instead of inveigling you into these surreptitious meetings, even although they have the charm of secrecy--and of Russian slippers."

He had caught some faint reflex of cheerfulness from the gladness of her face; but there was still about him a look of constraint and anxiety.

"It is too late to think of that," she said; "I go to Glasgow to-morrow."

"Have they found out? Are they sending you away?" he asked, hurriedly.

"No; there is nothing to find out. But Lady Drum, she is good enough to ask me to go with her; and there I will see my cousin, whom I have promised to visit often, yet have never been able. And I am sorry for him; alone in that great place, and the people here nearly forgetting him. Does he not deserve some reparation, some kindness from me?"

She looked up into his face; and he knew that she meant more than appeared in her words.

"I wonder," said Earlshope, after a little while, "if he does hope to win your love; if he is working there with the far-off intention of coming back here and asking you to be his wife? If that is so, we have acted very cruelly by him."

"Ah, not cruelly!" she said, as if begging him to reassure her. "If we have forgotten him, can I not make it up to him? You will see, when I go to Glasgow, I will be very kind to him--he will not think that he has been ill-used."

"But he will think that you are still looking favourably on his vague hopes--he will be all the more assured that, some day or other, you will become his wife."

"And if that will make him happy," she said, slowly and with absent eyes, "there is nothing I will not do to make him happy."

Earlshope regarded her with a strange look.

"You would become his wife?"

"If that only would make him happy--yes. He deserves so much from me--I will do that, if he demands it."

"You will marry him, and make him fancy that you love him?"

"No," she said, simply. "I should tell him everything. I should tell him that he deserves to marry a woman who has never loved any one but himself; and yet that I--if his marrying me will alone make him happy--I will do what I can, and be his wife."

"So the world goes," said her companion, with a sudden bitterness in his tone; "and it is the good, and the true, and the noble that suffer. You are far too unselfish to lead a happy life, Coquette. You will sacrifice yourself, sooner or later, for the sake of some one you love; and the reward you will get will be reprobation and the outcry of the crowd. And I--I have so far paved the way for all this that if I could free you at this moment by laying down my own life, you would find it no vain boast when I say now that I would do it willingly."

"But you have not made me suffer," she said, gently. "Look now and see whether I am sad or miserable. I have been so happy all this morning, merely to think I should see you--that is enough; and now you are here I am content. I wish no more in the world."

"But Coquette--don't you see?--it cannot end here," he said, almost desperately. "You do not know the chains in which I am bound. I--I dare not tell you--and yet, before you go to Glasgow----"

"No," she said, in the same gentle voice. "I do not wish to know. It is enough for me to be beside you as now--whatever is in store for us. And if it should all be bad and sorrowful, I shall remember that once I was satisfied--that once I walked with you here one morning, and we had no thought of ill, and we were for a little while happy."

"But I cannot stop there," said he. "I must look at the future. Oh, my poor girl, I think it would have been better for us both had we never been born!"

She drew back from him amazed and alarmed. All the grave kindliness of his face had gone, and he was regarding her with eyes so full of pity and of love that her heart grew still with fear. Why was it that, at the very moment when they were most peaceful and happy--when she merely wished to enjoy the satisfaction of being near him, leaving the future to take care of itself--why was it that this unnameable something should come in between them, and bid her begone from a man who had that to say which he dared not tell her? Yet her hesitation lasted but a moment. After all, she thought, what was her happiness in comparison with that of the man she loved? She saw the pain and the despair written on his face, and she drew nearer to him again, and took his hand in hers.

"I shall never wish that I had not been born," she said, "for I have known you a little while, and I have walked with you here. The rest is nothing. What can harm us, if we are true to ourselves, and do what we think is right?"

"That is possible to you--who are as clear-souled as an angel," he said.

Now what could ail two lovers who were walking thus in the happy spring-time--alone together--with youth in their eyes, and all the world before them? Was it not enough for them to be? All things around them were peaceful in the sunlight; the fields lay still and warm in their coating of young green; the birds were busy in the leaves of the hedges; and there was many a jubilant note in the woods. Far away in the south there lay a faint blue smoke over the houses of Ayr; but no murmur of toil and struggle reached them up on these moorland heights. The moor itself, and the fields, and the valleys were as still as the sea; which shone and trembled a pure and pale azure until it was lost in the white of the horizon. They only seemed out of consonance with the peace of this mild and clear spring day, in which the world lay and basked.

They strolled on together--Coquette sometimes picking up a flower--until they had got down to that corner of the Earlshope grounds where the small gate was. They had come thither unintentionally.

"Shall we go in?" said her companion.

"No," said Coquette. "It is too beautiful outside to-day. Why cannot we be away yonder on the sea, and sail along the coast of Arran, and on and up Loch Fyne, where the still blue lake is? I do remember it was so pleasant there--but afterwards----"

A cloud fell over her face, and Earlshope hastened to change the subject. He spoke of her going to Glasgow; of the chances of his seeing her there; of the time she would be likely to stay. By this time they had turned again, and were walking in the direction of the Manse. Somehow or other, Coquette seemed unwilling to speak of Glasgow, or to admit that she hoped to meet him. When, indeed, they had come within sight of the house, Coquette stopped, and said she would bid him good-bye there.

"But why are you so sad, Coquette?" he said. "This is no farewell; most likely I shall be in Glasgow before you."

"I am sorry for that," she said, with her eyes fixed on the ground.

"Why? What hidden notion of self-sacrifice have you adopted now?"

"You do not seem to know what reparation I do owe to my cousin. It is for him I go to Glasgow. You must not come if it will annoy him--the poor boy! who has not much to comfort him except--except----"

"Except the thought of marrying you, Coquette," said Earlshope; "and you--you seem to think nothing of yourself, if only you can secure the happiness of everybody else. Ah, well, if you wish me not to see you while you are in Glasgow, I will remain away. Let your cousin have that brief time of enjoyment. But for us two, Coquette--for us two there is no hope of this separation being final."

"Hope?" she said. "Why do you hope it? Is it not pleasant for us to see each other, if only we do no harm or pain to our friends? Why do you speak in that way, as if some great trouble was about to befall us? Sometimes I do fear what you say; and I think of it at night; and I tremble; for I have no one that I can speak to; but in the morning these fears go away; for I look out of the window, and I know you are near Earlshope, and I am only anxious to see you."

"My darling!" he said, with a look of great compassion and tenderness in his eyes. "You deserve the happiest life that ever a true-hearted woman enjoyed; and when I think what I have done to make you miserable--

"Ah, not miserable!" she said. "Do I look miserable? You must not think that; nor that I am at all miserable in Glasgow. No, good-bye--good-bye----"

"For how long?" said he, taking both her hands in his.

With that she looked down, and said in a very low voice--

"If you are weary here--you may come to see me in Glasgow--once, twice, but not often----"

The rest of her words were lost, for she found herself once more folded in his arms, as he bade her good-bye, and kissed her.

"Good-bye, Coquette, good-bye!" he said, tenderly; and when she had gone some way across the moor, and turned and saw him still standing there, it seemed to her that she still heard him say "Good-bye." He waved a handkerchief to her; it was as if he were on board a vessel standing out to sea, and that soon a great and desolate ocean would roll between them. When she got home, and went up into her own room, and looked out of the window, there was no figure visible on the wide expanse of the moor. There was nothing there but the sunshine and the quiet.

This was the first day that Coquette had known the joy of being loved; and lo! it was already empty. Fair and beautiful the morning had been--a day to be marked with a white stone in her memory; but it was already numbered with the times that were. And the love that filled her heart--it was no gay and happy thing, to make her laugh and sing out of pure delight; but an unrest and a care she was now to carry always with her, wondering whether its sweetness were as great as its pain.