Chapter XLIX: Coquette's Song

For a long period Coquette's life at Airlie was so uneventful that it may be dismissed with the briefest notice. It seemed to her that she had passed through that season of youth and springtime when romance and love and anticipation ought to colour for a brief while the atmosphere round a human existence as if with rainbows. That was all over--if, indeed, it had ever occurred to her. There was now but a sad, grey monotony; a going by of the weeks and months in this remote moorland place, where the people seemed hard, unimpressionable, unfriendly. She began to acquire notions of duty. She began to devise charitable occupations for herself. She even began various studies which could never by any chance be of use to her. And she grew almost to love the slow, melancholy droning by the old Scotch folk of those desolating passages in the Prophets which told of woe and wrath and the swift end of things, or which, still more appropriately, dealt with the vanity of life, and the shortness of man's days.

The Whaup would sometimes talk of marriage--she put it farther and farther off. He seldom indeed came to Airlie; his hospital-work kept him busy; and he was eagerly looking forward to the junior partnership that Dr. Menzies had promised him. But on one of these rare visits he said to his cousin--

"Coquette, you are growing very like a Scotch girl."

"Why?" she asked.

"In manner, I mean; not in appearance. You are not as demonstrative as you used to be. You appear more settled, prosaic, matter-of-fact. You have lost all your old childish caprices; and you no longer appear to be so pleased with every little thing that happens. You are much graver than you used to be."

"Do you think so?" she said, absently.

"But when we are married I mean to take you away from this slow place, and introduce you to lots of pleasant people, and brighten you up into the old Coquette."

"I am very content to be here," she said, quietly.

"Content! Is that all you ask for? Content! I suppose a nun is content with a stone cell eight feet square. But you were not intended to be content; you must be delighted, and you shall be delighted. Coquette, you never laugh now!"

"And you," she said, "you are grown much serious too."

"Oh, well," he said, "I have such a deal to think about. One has to drop robbing people's gardens some day or other."

"I have some things to think about also," she said--"not always to make me laugh."

"What troubles you, then, Coquette?" he demanded gently.

"Oh, I cannot be asked questions, and questions always," she said, with a trace of fretful impatience, which was a startling surprise to him. "I have much to do in the village, with the children--and the parents, they do seem afraid of me."

The Whaup regarded her silently, with rather a pained look in his face; and then she, looking up, seemed to become aware that she had spoken harshly. She put her hand on his hand, and said--

"You must not be angry with me, Tom. I do often find myself getting vexed, I do not know why; and I ask myself, if I do stay long enough at Airlie, whether I shall become like Leezibeth and her husband."

"You shall not stay long enough to try," said the Whaup, cheerfully.

Then he went away up to Glasgow, determined to work day and night to achieve his dearest hopes. Sometimes he reflected, when he heard his fellow-students tell of their gay adventures with their sweethearts, that his sweetheart, in bidding him good-bye, had never given him one kiss. And on each occasion that he went down to Airlie, Coquette seemed to him to be growing more and more like the beautiful and sad Madonnas of early Italian art, and he scarce dared to think of kissing her.

So the days went by, and the slow, humdrum life of Airlie crept through the seasons, bringing the people a little nearer to the churchyard up on the moor that had received their fathers and their forefathers. The Minister worked away with a patient earnestness at his Concordance to the Psalms; and had the pride of a young author in thinking of its becoming a real, bound book with the opening of the new year. Coquette went systematically and gravely about her charitable works in the village, and took no notice of the ill-favour with which her efforts were regarded. All that summer and winter Earlshope remained empty.

One evening, in the beginning of the new year, Mr. Gillespie the Schoolmaster came up to the Manse, and was admitted into the study, where Coquette and her uncle sat together, busy with an array of proof-sheets. The Schoolmaster had a communication to make. Mr. Cassilis, enjoying the strange excitement and responsibility of correcting the sheets of a work which would afterwards bear his name, was forced to beg the Schoolmaster to be brief; and he, thus goaded, informed them, after a short preamble, that Earlshope was to be sold.

The Schoolmaster was pleased with the surprise which his news produced. Indeed, he had come resolved to watch the effect of these tidings upon the Minister's niece, so that he might satisfy his mind of her being in secret collusion with the young Lord of Earlshope; and he now glared at her through his gold spectacles. She had started on hearing the intelligence--so that she was evidently unacquainted with it; and yet she showed no symptoms of regret over an event which clearly betokened Lord Earlshope's final withdrawal from the country.

"A strange, even an unaccountable thing, it may be termed," observed the Schoolmaster, "inasmuch as his lordship was no spendthrift, and had surely as much as could satisfy all his wants or necessities, as one might say. Yet he has aye been a singular young man--which may have been owing, or caused by, certain circumstances, or relationships of which you have doubtless heard, Mr. Cassilis."

"I have heard too much of the vain talking of the neighbourhood about his lordship and his affairs," said the Minister, impatiently turning to his proofs.

"I will venture to say, Mr. Cassilis," remarked the Schoolmaster, who was somewhat nettled, "that it is no vain talking, as no one has been heard to deny that he is a married man."

"Dear me!" said the Minister, looking up. "Of what concern is it to either you or me, Mr. Gillespie, whether he is a married man or not?"

The Schoolmaster was rather stunned. He looked at Coquette. She sat apparently unimpressionable and still. He heaved a sigh, and shook his head; and then he rose.

"It is the duty o' a Christian--which I humbly hope that I am, sir,--no' to think ill of his neighbours; but I confess, Mr. Cassilis, ye go forward a length in that airt, or direction, I might term it rather, which is surprising."

The Minister rose also.

"Let me see you through the passage, Mr. Gillespie, which is dark at these times. I do not claim for myself, however, any especial charity in this matter; for I would observe that it is not always to a man's disfavour to believe him married."

As the passage was in reality exceedingly dark, the Schoolmaster could not tell whether there was in the Minister's eye a certain humorous twinkle which he had sometimes observed there, and which, to tell the truth, he did not particularly like, for it generally accompanied a severe rebuke. However, the Schoolmaster had done his duty. The Minister was warned; and if any of his household were led astray, the village of Airlie could wash its hands of the matter.

At last there came people to make Earlshope ready for the auctioneer's hammer; and then there was a great sale, and the big house was gutted and shut up. But neither it nor the estate was sold; though strangers came from time to time to look at both.

Once more the still moorland neighbourhood returned to its quiet ways; and Coquette went the round of her simple duties, lessening day by day the vague prejudice which had somehow been stirred up against her. It was with no such intention, certainly, that she laboured; it was enough if the days passed, and if the Whaup were content to cease writing for a definite answer about that marriage which was yet far away in the future. Leezibeth looked on this new phase of the girl's character with an esteem and approval tempered by something like awe. She could not tell what had taken away from her all the old gaiety, and wilfulness, and carelessness. Strangely enough, too, Leezibeth was less her confidante now; and on the few occasions that Lady Drum came over to Airlie, the old lady was surprised to find Coquette grown almost distant and reserved in manner. Indeed, the girl was as much alone there as if she had been afloat on a raft at sea. All hope of change, of excitement, of pleasure, seemed to have left her. She seldom opened the piano; and, when she did, "Drumclog" was no longer a martial air, but a plaintive wail of grief.

Perhaps, of all the people around her, the one that noticed most of her low spirits was the Whaup's young brother Dugald, of whom she had made a sort of pet. Very often she took him with her on her missions into the village, or her walks into the country round. And one day, as they were sitting on the moor, she said to him--

"I suppose you never heard of an old German song that is very strange and sad? I wonder if I can remember the words and repeat them to you. They are something like this--

Three horsemen rode out to the gate of the town: Good-bye!
Fine-Sweetheart, she looked from her window down: Good-bye!
And if ill fate such grief must bring
Then reach me hither your golden ring!
Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!
Ah, parting wounds so bitterly!

And it is Death that parts us so: Good-bye!
Many a rose-red maiden must go: Good-bye!
He sunders many a man from wife:
They knew how happy a thing was life.
Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!
Ah, parting wounds so bitterly!

He steals the infant out of its bed: Good-bye!
And when shall I see my nut-brown maid? Good-bye!
It is not to-morrow: ah, were it to-day,
There are two that I know that would be gay!
Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!
Ah, parting wounds so bitterly!

"What does it mean?" asked the boy.

"I think it means," said Coquette, looking away over the moor, "that everybody in the world is miserable."

"And are you miserable, too?" he asked.

"Not more than others, I suppose," said Coquette.