Chapter XLIII: Coquette Is Told

Lady Drum began to grow afraid. Should she send Coquette at once back to Airlie? Her first impulse, on hearing the disclosures made by Lord Earlshope at the theatre, was one of indignation and anger against himself, for having, as she thought, unnecessarily acted a lie during so many years, and deceived his friends. She now understood all the strange references he had often made to married life--the half-concealed and bitter irony of his talk--his nervous susceptibility on certain points--his frequent appearance of weariness and hopelessness, as of a man to whom life was no longer of any value. She was amazed at the morbid sense of shame which rendered this man so anxious to avoid the confession of his having made a desperate blunder in his youth. Why had he gone about under false colours? Why had he imposed on his friends? Why had he spoken to Coquette?

This thought of Coquette flashed upon Lady Drum as a revelation. She knew now why the disclosure of Earlshope's marriage had made her angry; and she at once did him the justice of remembering that, so far as she knew, he had made no pretensions to be the lover of Coquette. That had been Lady Drum's secret hope: he could not be blamed for it.

But at the same time there was something about the relations between Earlshope and Coquette which she did not understand; and as she felt herself peculiarly responsible for that young lady, she began to ask herself if she had not better make all things safe by sending Coquette home to her uncle. Lady Drum sat in the corner of her morning-room, and looked down from the window on the Park. Coquette was out there as usual--for there was sunshine abroad, which she loved as a drunkard loves drink--and she was leisurely reading a book under the shadow of her sunshade. How quiet and happy she looked--buried away from all consciousness of the world around her in that other world of romance that lay unfolded on her knee! Lady Drum had got to love the girl with a mother's tenderness; and as she now looked down on her she wondered what precautions could be taken to render the fair young life inviolate from wrong and suffering, if that were possible.

First of all, she wrote a note to Lord Earlshope, and sent it down to his hotel, asking him to call on her immediately. She wished to have further explanations before saying anything to Sir Peter, or, indeed, to any one of the little circle that had been formed at Airlie. At the moment she was writing this letter, Earlshope himself was walking quickly up to the place where Coquette sat.

"Ah, it is you! I do wish much to see you for a few moments," she said, with something of gladness in her face.

He did not reply; but sat down beside her, his lips firm, and his brow clouded. She did not notice this alteration from his ordinary demeanour; but immediately proceeded to say, in rather a low voice, and with her eyes grown serious and even anxious--

"I have much to say to you. I have been thinking over all our position with each other, and I am going to ask you for a favour. First of all, I will tell you a secret."

Why did she look constrained, and even agitated? he asked himself. Had she already heard from Lady Drum? Her fingers were working nervously with the book before her; her breath seemed to go and come more quickly; and her voice was almost inaudible.

"This is what I must tell you," she said, with her eyes fixed on the ground. "I have promised to my cousin to be his wife. I did tell you I should do that, and now it is done, and he is glad. I am not glad, perhaps--not now--but afterwards it may be different. And so, as I am to be his wife, I do not think it is right I should see you any more; and I will ask you to go away now altogether, and when we do meet, here or in Airlie, it will be the same with us as strangers. You will do this for my sake--will you not? It is much to ask; I shall be more sorry than you, perhaps; but how can I see you if I am to marry him?"

"And so we are to be strangers, Coquette," he said, quite calmly. "It is all over, then. We have had some pleasant dreaming; but the daylight has come, and the work of the world. When we meet each other, as you say, it will be as strangers--strangers as on the first morning I saw you at Airlie, driving up the road in the sunlight, when I was glad to know that you were going to remain at the Manse. All that happened down at Airlie is to be forgotten; and you and I are just like two people passing each other in the street, and not expecting, perhaps, even to meet again. Yet there are some things which neither you nor I shall ever forget."

"Ah, I know that--I know that!" said Coquette, almost wildly. "Do not speak of all that now. Sometimes I do think I cannot do as my cousin wishes--I become afraid--I cannot speak to him--I begin to tremble when I think of all the long years to come. Alas! I have sometimes wondered whether I shall live till then."

"Coquette, what do you mean?" he said. "Have you resolved to make your life miserable? Is this how you look forward to marriage, which ought to be the proudest event in a woman's life, and the seal of all the happiness to come after? What have you done, Coquette?"

"I have done what I ought to do," she said, "and it is only at moments that I do fear of it. My cousin is very good; he is very fond of me; he will break his heart if I do not marry him. And I do like him very well, too. Perhaps, in some years, I shall have forgotten a great deal of all that is past now, and shall have come to be very fond of him, too; and it will be a pleasure to me to become his wife. You must not be sorry for me. You must not think it is a sacrifice, or anything like that. When I am afraid now--when I am sad too, so that I wish I could go away to France, and not see any more of this country--it is only when I do think of Airlie, and of--of--"

She never finished the sentence, because her lips were beginning to quiver. And for a moment, too, his look had grown absent, as if he were calling up memories of the days of their meetings on the moor--meetings which were but recent, and yet which now seemed buried far away in the forlorn mists of the past. All at once he appeared to rouse himself, and said, with some abruptness--

"Coquette, you do not blame me for being unable to help you in your distress. I am going to tell you why I cannot. I am going to tell you what will render it unnecessary for me to promise not to see you again; for you will hate the sight of me, and consider me not fit to be spoken to by any honest man or woman. Many and many a time have I determined to tell you; and yet it seemed so hard that I should make you my enemy--that you should go away only with contempt for me----"

She interrupted him quickly, and with some alarm on her face.

"Ah, I know," she said. "You will tell me something you have done--why? What is the use of that now? I do not wish to hear it. I wish to think of you always as I think now; and when I look back at our last meeting in Glasgow--you sitting there, I here, and bidding good-bye to all that time which began down at Airlie, I shall have pleasure of it, even if I cry about it. Why do you tell me this thing? What is the use? Is it wise to do it? I have seen you often about to tell me a secret. I have seen you disturbed and anxious; and sometimes I have wondered, too, and wished to know. But then, I did think there was enough trouble in the world without adding this; and I hoped you would remain to me always as you were then--when I did first begin to know you."

"Why, Coquette," he said, with a strange, half-tender look of admiration, "your generosity shames me all the more, and shows me what a horribly selfish wretch I have been. You don't half seem to know how good you are."

His voice dropped a little here, as there was some one coming along the road. Lord Earlshope and Coquette both sat silent, and did not look up, expecting the stranger to pass.

But the stranger did not pass. On the contrary, she came nearer, as if to sit down on the same seat with them, and so Earlshope turned round to see who she was. No sooner had he done so than he started to his feet with an oath, and confronted the woman who stood before him. Coquette, alarmed beyond measure, saw that the stranger was the singular-looking person, with the coarse and red face, and the unsteady black eyes, who had sat opposite her in the theatre the previous evening, and who now regarded both herself and Lord Earlshope with a glance full of malicious amusement in it. He, on the other hand, had his face white with rage, and indeed, had advanced a step or two as if to thrust her back from Coquette; but now he stood with apparent self-control, his hands clenched.

"You had better go home," he said, still facing the stranger. "I give you fair warning you had better go home."

"Why," said the woman, with a loud laugh, "you have not said as much to me for six years back! You might give me a pleasanter welcome. My dear," she added, looking to Coquette, "I am sorry to have disturbed you; but do you know who I am? I am Lady Earlshope. You are not surprised? Perhaps you don't understand? Indeed, I saw you were a foreigner by your dress last evening. The women in this country don't know how to dress; do they? What are you--Italian or French?"

Coquette had risen to her feet, and stood quite still--a trifle pale, perhaps, but not visibly terrified. The woman advanced a step or two; Lord Earlshope caught her by the wrist. Her air of bantering merriment changed in a moment, and a glow of passion sprang to the hot, powerful-looking face, and the sullen black eyes. She wrenched away her hand with an angry vehemence, and let loose all the venom of her tongue.

"Have you no shame, woman, that you make an exhibition of yourself in the open day?" he said. "Are you determined to give me the honour of appearing in a police-court against you?"

With that she burst out into another laugh, the harshness and unreality of which sounded strangely in Coquette's ears.

"It is not the first time I have been in a police-court. Did you hear of my horse-whipping that old Duke in the streets of Madrid? Yes, I thought you must have heard the story. Come, Harry, let's be friends! I will leave you with the little Italian. I have my carriage at the gate there--there is brandy in it--shall we celebrate the charming conjugal scene we have just gone through? No!"

She shrugged her shoulders, and laughed in a vacuous way; it was apparent she required no more brandy.

"Good-bye, then, for the present. This little conversation with you, Harry, has been quite delightful--reminding one of old days--but don't you lay hands on me again, or, by heavens, you will be a dead man the next moment. _Addio, addio_! And for you, you pretty little signorina, with the black eyes and the dumb mouth, _quando avrò il piacere di rivederla_? What, you don't speak Italian either? Never mind. I shall see both of you again, I hope."

She walked back along the road to the gate of the park, where an open carriage was waiting. A servant opened the door for her. She stepped up and took her seat, and drove off alone, laughing and kissing her hands in a tipsy fashion to the pair she had just left.

"Coquette," said Earlshope, "that is my wife."

He was watching every line of her face, with an anxious sadness, to gather what her first impulse would be. And yet he felt that in uttering these words he had for ever disgraced himself in her eyes, and deserved only to be thrust away from her with horror and shame. Indeed he waited to hear her own lips pronounce his condemnation and decree his banishment.

Coquette came a step nearer and looked him in the face, and held out her hand, and said--

"I know it all now, and am very sorry for you."

"But don't you remember what I have done, Coquette?" he said, with wonder in his look. "I am not fit to take your hand. But if you would only listen to me for a moment--that is all I ask. Will you sit down, Coquette? I cannot excuse myself, but I want to tell you something."

"You have had a sad life," said Coquette, calmly. "I do now know the reason of many things, and I cannot be angry. It is no use to be angry now, when we are going away from each other."

"You see that woman," he said, sinking down on the seat with an expression of the most utter and hopeless despair. "I married her when I was a lad fresh from college. I met her in Paris--I was travelling--she, too, was going about with her father, who called himself an officer; I followed her from town to town; and in three months I was married. Married!--chained to a wild beast rather. When I got to know the hideous habits of the woman to whom I was indissolubly linked, suicide was my first thought. What other refuge had I from a state of things that was worse than anything death could bring to me? The law cannot step in between her and me. Brutal and debased as she is, she has far too good a notion of the advantages of a tolerable income to risk it by doing anything on which I could claim a divorce. Ignorant and passionate she is; but she is not a fool in money matters; and so there was nothing for it but to buy up her absence by paying any price for it. I discovered what sort of woman she was before we ever returned to England; and when I came back here, I came alone. I dreaded the exposure of the blunder I had committed, partly on my own account, but chiefly on account of the disgrace I had brought on my family. How could I introduce this drunken and insolent woman to my friends, and have them insulted by her open defiances of decency? Year after year I lived down there at Earlshope--hearing only of her wild escapades from a distance. I exacted from her, as a condition of giving her more than the half of my income, a promise to drop my name; and perhaps you may have heard of the notorious Mrs. Smith Arnold, with whom the London magistrates are familiar. That is the woman you have just seen. These stories came to me down at Earlshope, until I dared scarcely open a newspaper; and I grew to hate the very sight of woman, as being related to the devil who had ruined my life. And then you came to Airlie."

He paused for a moment. She had never before seen him so moved.

"I looked in your pure and young face, and I thought the world seemed to grow more wholesome and sweet. I began to believe that there were tender and true-hearted women in the world; and sometimes I thought what I might have been, too, but for that irremediable blunder. Fancy some sinner in hell, who is tortured by remorse over the sins and lost opportunities of his life, and there comes to him a bunch of pale violets, sweet with the fragrant memories of his youth, when the world was innocent and fair to him, and when he believed in the girl who was walking with him, and in the heaven over his head----"

"Ah, do not talk like that!" she said. "It is more terrible than all you have told me."

"You do not know the condition into which I had sunk. To you I was a mere easy-tempered idler, who strolled about the country and amused himself indolently. To myself I was a sepulchre, filled with the dead bones and dust of buried hopes and beliefs. What had I to live for? When I went about and saw other men enjoying the comfort of happy domestic relations--men who had a home, and a constant companion and confidante to share their holiday journeys or their quiet summer evenings--my own solitude and wretchedness were all the more forcibly thrust on me. I shut myself up in that house at Airlie. It was enough if the hours went by--enough that I was left alone. Goodness knows, I did not complain much or seek to revenge myself on society for my own mistake. If my blunder, according to the existing state of the law, demanded so much punishment, I was willing to suffer it. During these solitary days, I used to study myself as if there were another being beside me, and watch how the last remnants of belief in anything were being gradually worn away, bit by bit, by the irritation of this sense of wrong. If you had known me as I really was when you first saw me, you would have shrank away in fear. Do you remember the morning I got up on the dog-cart to talk to you?"

"Yes," said Coquette, in a low voice.

"For a few moments I forgot myself. When I left you at the Manse, I discovered to my intense astonishment that I was quite cheerful--that the world seemed ever so much brighter, and that Airlie moor looked well in the sunlight. Then I thought of your coming in among those gloomy Cameronians, and whether your light and happy southern nature, which I saw even then, would conquer the prejudice and suspicion around you. It was a problem that interested me deeply. When I got to know you a little you used to tell me inadvertently, how things were going on at the Manse, and I saw that the fight would be a hard one, but that you would win in the end. First of all, you took your cousin captive--that was natural. Then the Minister. Then you won over Leezibeth. There remains only Andrew now; for I think you would secure a large majority in a _plébiscite_ of the villagers. As for myself, that I can scarcely talk about just yet. It seemed so harmless a thing at first for me to see you--to have the comfort even of looking at you from a distance as you sat in the little church--or to pass you on the road, with a look and a smile. There was a new life in Airlie. Sometimes I thought bitterly of what might have been but for the error which had ruined me; but that thought disappeared in the actual enjoyment of your presence. Then I began to play with the danger that would have been more obvious to another man, but which I laughed at. For was it possible that I could fall in love, like a schoolboy, and sigh and write verses? I began to make experiments with myself. You know the rest, Coquette; but you do not know the remorse that struck me when I found that my thoughtlessness had prepared a great misery for you."

"It was no misery," she said, simply; "it was a pleasure to me; and if it was wrong, which I do not know, it comes to an end now. And you--I am not angry with you; for your life has not been a happy one--and you did not know until we were up in the Highlands that it mattered to me--and then you went away----"

"Coquette," he said, "I won't have you make excuses for me. I can make none for myself. When I look at you, and think of what I ought to have done when you came to Airlie--I should have told you there and then, and guarded against every possibility--I feel that I am an outcast. But who would have thought it possible?" he added, with his eyes grown distant and sombre. "I do not know how it has all come about; but you and I are sitting together here for the last time; and we are going different ways--whither, who can tell?"

With that Coquette rose--no trace of emotion visible on the calm face.

"Good-bye," she said. "I will hear of you sometimes through Lady Drum."

"Good-bye, Coquette," he said, taking her hand. And then a strange expression came over his face, and he added suddenly, "It is madness and wickedness to say it, but I will say it. Coquette, you will never forget that there is a man in the world who loves you better than his own life--who will venture everything that remains to him in this world and the next to do you the tiniest service. Will you remember that--always? Good-bye, Coquette--God bless you for your gentleness, and your sweetness, and your forgiveness!"

She turned from him, and walked away, and went up the steps towards the house, all by herself. As she passed through the hall, Lady Drum met her, and asked her a question. The girl replied, quite calmly, though rather in a low voice, and passed on. Lady Drum was struck with the expression of her face, which was singularly colourless and immobile; and she looked after her as she went up the stairs. Was there not something unsteady in her gait? The old lady followed her, and went to the door of her room, and listened. A great fear smote her heart, for within there was a sound of wild weeping and sobbing; and when she straightway opened the door, and hurried into the room, she found Coquette sitting by the bedside, her face and hands buried in the clothes, and her slight frame trembling and convulsed with the passion of her grief.

"What is it, Coquette? What is it, Coquette?" she cried, in great alarm.

And she sat down by the girl, and drew her towards her bosom, as she would have done with her own child, and hid her face there. And then Coquette told her story.