Chapter XLI: The Whaup Becomes Anxious

Coquette's stay in Glasgow did not promise well for the Whaup's studies. On the very morning after she had given him a rose to cheer him on his homeward walk, he was again up at Lady Drum's house. He looked very blank, however, on being shown into a room, to find that venerable lady the sole occupant; and he saw by the shrewd and good-natured smile on her face that she perceived his disappointment.

"Yes, she is out," said Lady Drum. "Is that the question ye would ask?"

"Well, it is, to tell you the truth," said the Whaup.

"Could ye expect her to bide in the house on a morning like this? If there is a glint o' sunshine to be seen anywhere she is off and out like a butterfly before we have breakfast over."

"Young ladies ought not to go out alone like that," said the Whaup, who had suddenly acquired serious and even gloomy notions of propriety.

His elderly friend took him to the window. Before them lay the long terraces of the Park, the deep valley, the trees, the river, and the opposite heights, all dully radiant in a pallid and smoky sunshine. And on the terrace underneath the window there was a bench; and on the bench sat, all by herself, a young person, whose downcast face, bent over a book, was hidden underneath a white sunshade; and there was nothing at all by which to distinguish the stranger but her faintly yellow morning dress, that shone palely in the sun. Yet you should have seen how swiftly the Whaup's face cleared. In about thirty seconds he had taken an unceremonious farewell of Lady Drum, and hastened down into the Park.

"You must not come to see me every day," said Coquette; "you do give up all your work."

"But look here, Coquette," he remarked, gravely, "isn't it the proper thing to pay a visit of ceremony after a dinner-party?"

"At ten o'clock in the morning?" she said, with a smile; "four o'clock is the time for such calls, and it is not to me you pay them."

He made no reply; but he drew away the book from her lap, and quietly shut it and put it in his pocket. Then he said--

"We are going to have a stroll through the Botanic Gardens."

So she surrendered herself--her only protest being a well-simulated sigh, at which he laughed--and away they went. Glasgow College, and all its class rooms, might have been in the Philippine Islands for anything that the Whaup remembered of them.

Many and many a time during this long and devious saunter, which took them a good deal farther than the Botanic Gardens, the Whaup--yielding to that strange dissatisfaction with their present happiness which distinguishes lovers and fills the most beatific period of human life with trouble--would drag back their rambling talk to the reasons Coquette had for being apprehensive of the future. Why was she disinclined to speak of a possible limit to the number of years he had yet to wait? why did she almost pathetically counsel him to fix his affections on some one else?

Coquette replied gravely, and sometimes a little sadly, to these questions; but she had not the courage to reveal to him the whole truth. There was something so touching in the very trust that he reposed in her--in the frank and generous way that he appealed to her, and took it for granted that she would become his wife--that, in the meantime, she dared not tell him that her heart still wandered away to another man. He did not know that his protestations of love sounded coldly in her ears; and only suggested what they would have been had they been uttered by another. He thought it strange that she was glad to avoid those little confessions and wondering hopes which are the common talk of lovers; and would far rather have him speak to her about his professional future, or even the details of his college life.

For herself, she seemed to think it enough if her cousin were pleased to walk with her; and some day, she doubted not, she would yield to his urgent wishes and become his wife. By that time, was it not likely that the strange unrest in her heart, that vague longing for the presence of one whose name she scarcely ever mentioned, would have died utterly away? And in the remote possibility of her giving herself to her cousin, was it not her duty now to try to eradicate that hapless love which had far more of pain than of pleasure in it? While the Whaup was eagerly sketching out the life which he and she should live together, Coquette was trying to make up her mind never again to see Lord Earlshope.

But it was a hard trial. A woman may marry this man or that man--her affections may shift and alter--but she never forgets the man she loved with all the wonder, and idealism, and devotion of a girl's early love. Coquette asked herself whether she could ever forget Airlie, and the stolen interviews of those spring mornings, and the pathetic farewells that the sea, and the sky, and the shining landscape alone knew.

"Dreaming again," said the Whaup, gently. "I suppose you don't know that that is a river you are looking at?"

They were standing on the small wooden bridge that crosses the Kelvin; and she was gazing into the water as if it were a mirror on which all the future years were reflected.

"Does this river go to the sea?" she asked.

"Most rivers do," replied the Whaup--proud, like a man, of his superior scientific knowledge.

"And perhaps in a day or two it will see Arran."

"Why, you speak as if you were already anxious to leave Glasgow and go back," said the Whaup. "What amusement can there be for you there? My father is buried in that Concordance. Lady Drum is here. Earlshope is deserted--by the way, I wonder what has become of Lord Earlshope."

"Let us go," said Coquette, hastily; and she took her arm off the wooden parapet of the bridge, and went on. The Whaup did not perceive that his mention of Lord Earlshope's name had struck a jarring note.

So they walked leisurely in to Glasgow again; and all the way Coquette skilfully avoided conversation about the matters which were naturally uppermost in her companion's mind. Indeed, a discovery which she made greatly helped her out of the dilemma, and enlivened the remainder of their ramble. She inadvertently slipped into French in making some remark; and the Whaup quickly replied to her in the same tongue. She was surprised and delighted beyond measure. She had no idea of his having studied hard since he left Airlie to extend the small acquaintance with the language which he had picked up as a boy. She saw well what had urged him to do so; and she was pleased by this occult compliment. She insisted on their talking nothing but French all the way home; and the Whaup--with occasional stammering, laughing, and blushing--managed to sustain the conversation with tolerable ease and fluency. She corrected his idioms--very gently, it is true; and also hinted that he might, if he liked, adopt the familiar _tutoiement_ which ought to exist between cousins.

"But I can't," said the Whaup. "My conversation books have taught me to say _vous_; and so, until I learn, you must call me _tu_, and I will call you anything that comes uppermost."

This, and all that followed, was spoken in rough-and-ready French, the grammar of which was a good deal better than its pronunciation; and the care which the Whaup had to bestow on his language lent an unromantic and matter-of-fact character to the subjects of their talk, to Coquette's great relief.

When they had reached the house she said--

"You must come in and make an apology to Lady Drum for your inattention. Then you will have a little lunch. Then you will go home and attend to your studies until the evening. Then you will come here and go with us to the theatre; and you may bring a bouquet for Lady Drum, if you choose."

"Any more commands, Coquette?" he said. "What, nothing more? How many lines of Greek must I do if I am disobedient?"

"You must not be rude to me," she remarked, "because that is a trace of your bringing-up at Airlie, which you have nearly forgotten. It is a relic of your savage nature. You are much improved; you are almost civilised."

"Yes," said the Whaup, "I saw a cart of turnips go by yesterday quite unprotected from behind, and I did not steal one..... Hillo! who is that sitting with Lady Drum at the window?"

Coquette looked up, and did not betray the least emotion, although a sharp spasm shot across her heart.

"It is Lord Earlshope, is it not?" she said, in a low voice.

"Yes," said the Whaup, with a sudden coldness in his tone, and returning at once to his English; "it is rather singular he should come here just now, but that is his own affair. No one ever could tell what he would do next. Coquette, I don't think I shall go into the house just now--you make my excuses to Lady Drum."

"Very well," said Coquette, calmly.

She held out her hand to bid him good-bye. He was surprised. He expected she would have insisted on his going into the house; and, on the contrary, she seemed rather relieved that he was going away.

"What is the matter, Coquette?" he asked. "Are you vexed because I am going away? Very well--I will go in--come along."

And with that, he went up the steps; but he could not tell by her face whether or not she had been annoyed by his wishing to go. They entered the house together. Lord Earlshope rose as they went into the room, and stepped forward to meet Coquette; and the Whaup watched the manner in which she advanced to shake hands with him. Why were her eyes cast down, and her face a trifle pale? She answered in almost an inaudible way the kindly inquiries which Lord Earlshope--whose demeanour was quite unconstrained, frank, and courteous--made as to her having enjoyed her visit to Glasgow. The Whaup himself, in shaking hands with his rival, was constrained to admit that there was something pleasant and friendly in Earlshope's manner, and in the look of his clear light-blue eye, which rather disarmed suspicion. In a very few minutes the Whaup had completely thawed, and was laughing heartily at a letter sent by Mr. Gillespie, the schoolmaster, which Lord Earlshope read aloud to Lady Drum.

Nevertheless, as he went to his lodgings he was considerably disquieted. He did not like leaving Lord Earlshope in the company of Coquette. It seemed to him an infringement of that right of property which he had acquired by her promise. In the old days he was vaguely jealous, and was inclined to be rudely suspicious of Coquette's small prevarications; but his jealousy and his rudeness were readily dissipated whenever he came under the influence of Earlshope's good nature, or of Coquette's gentle solicitude. Now he had a still better claim to look after her. Had he not sworn in the olden time to take care of her, and be her champion? Alas! the Whaup had yet to learn that a woman is best left to take care of herself in such delicate matters; and that no guard can be placed on the capricious wanderings of her affection.