Chapter VII: The Crucifix

"I am going to sea," said the Whaup, suddenly presenting himself before Coquette. She looked up with her soft dark eyes, and said--

"Why you go to sea?"

"Because," said the Whaup--evidently casting about for an excuse--"because the men of this country should be a seafaring race, as their forefathers were. We cannot all be living in big towns, and becoming clerks. I am for a hardier life. I am sick of staying at home. I cannot bear this idling any more. I have been down to the coast; and when I smell the salt air, and see the waves come tumbling in, I hate to turn my face to the land again."

There was a sort of shamefaced enthusiasm in the lad's manner; and Coquette, as she again regarded him, perceived that, although he believed all he had said, that was not the cause of his hasty determination. Yet the boy looked every inch a sailor--the sun-brown hair thrown back from his handsome face, and the clear light shining in his blue eyes.

"There is something else," said the girl. "Why you say nothing of all this before? Why do you wish to become a sailor all at once?"

"And, if I must tell you," said he, with a sudden fierceness, "I will. I don't choose to stay here to see what I know will happen. You are surprised? Perhaps. But you are a mere child. You have been brought up in a French convent, or some such place. You think everybody in the world is like yourself, and you make friends with anybody. You think they are all as good and as kind as yourself; and you are so light-hearted, you never stop to think or to suspect. Enough; you may go on your way, in spite of warning; but I will not remain here to see my family disgraced by your becoming the friend and companion of a man like Lord Earlshope."

He spoke warmly and indignantly; and the girl rather cowed before him, until he uttered the fatal word "disgrace."

"Disgrace!" she repeated, and a quick light sprang to her eyes. "I have disgraced no one, not any time in my life! I will choose my own friends, and I will not be suspicious. You are worse than the woman here: she wants me to believe myself bad and wicked. Perhaps I am--I do not know--but I will not begin to suspect my friends of being bad. If he is so bad, why does your father go to his house?"

"My father is as simple as you are," said the Whaup, contemptuously.

"Then it is only that you are suspicious? I did not think it of you."

She looked hurt and vexed; and a great compunction filled the heart of the Whaup.

"Look here," he said, firmly (and in much better English than was customary with him), "you are my cousin, and it is my business to warn you when you are likely to get into trouble. But don't imagine I am going to persecute you. No. You may do as you please. Perhaps you are quite right. Perhaps it is only that I am suspicious. But, as you are my cousin, I don't wish to stand by and see what is likely to happen; and so I am going away. The sea will suit me better than a college life, or a doctor's shop, or a pulpit."

Coquette rose from her seat, and began to walk up and down the room, in deep distress.

"I must go," she said; "it is I who must go. I bring wretchedness when I come here--my friends are made miserable--it is my fault. I should not have come. In France I was very happy; they used to call me the peace-maker at school; and all the people there were cheerful and kind. Here I am wicked--I do not know how--and the cause of contention and pain. Ah, why you go away because of me!" she suddenly exclaimed, as she took his hand, while tears started to her eyes. "It does not matter to me if I go--I am nobody; I have no home to break up. I can go away, and nobody the worse."

"Perhaps it is the best thing you can do," he said, frankly. "But if you go, I will go with you--to take care of you."

Coquette laughed.

"You are incomprehensible," she said. "Why not take care of me here?"

"Will you give me that duty?" he asked, calmly.

"Yes," she said, with a bright smile, "you shall take care of me as much--as much as you can."

"Mind, it is no joke," said he. "If I resolve to take care of you, I will do it; and anybody interfering----"

He did not finish the sentence.

"You will fight for me?" she said, putting her hand on his arm, and leading him over to the window. "Do you see those clouds away over the sea--how they come on, and on, and go away? These are the moods of a man--his promises--his intentions. But overhead do you see the blue sky?--that is the patience of a woman. Sometimes the clouds are dark--sometimes white--but the sky is always the same: is it not?"

"Hm!" said the Whaup, with a touch of scorn, "that is the romantic stuff they teach you at your French school, is it? It is very pretty, but it isn't true. A man has more patience and more steadfastness than a woman. What you meant was, I suppose, that whatever I might be to you, you would always be the same to me. Perhaps so! We shall see in a few years. But you will never find any difference in me--after any number of years--if you want somebody to take your part. You may remember what I say now afterwards."

"I think I could always trust you," she said, looking rather wistfully at him with those dark eyes that he had almost ceased to regard as foreign and strange. "You have been very good to me since I came here."

"And I have found out something new for you," he said, eagerly--so glad was he to fix and establish those amicable relations. "I hear you were pleased because Lord Earlshope had French things for you to eat and drink?"

"Yes--I was pleased," she said, timidly, and looking down.

"But you don't know that there is a town close by here as like St. Nazaire as it can be: would ye not like to see that?"

"It is impossible!" she said.

"Come and see," he replied.

Coquette very speedily discovered that the Whaup, refusing to accept of Lord Earlshope's invitation, had gone off by himself on a visit to Saltcoats; that he had fallen in with some sailors there; that he had begun talking with them of France and of the French seaports; and that one of the men had delighted him by saying that on one side the very town he was in resembled the old place at the mouth of the Loire. Of course Miss Coquette was in great anxiety to know where this favoured town was situated; and would at once have started off in quest of it.

"Let us go up to your parlour, and I will show it to you," said the Whaup.

So they went up-stairs, and went to the window. It was getting towards the afternoon; and a warm light from the south-west lay over the fair yellow country, with its dark lines of hedge and copse, its ruddy streaks of sand, and the distant glimmer of a river. Seaward there was a lowering which presaged a storm; and the black line of the Saltcoats houses fronted a plain of water which had a peculiar light shining along its surface.

"That is the town," said the Whaup, pointing with a calm air of pride to Saltcoats.

"I see nothing but a line of slates, and a church that seems to stand out in the sea," said Coquette, with some disappointment.

"But you must go down to it to find the old stone wall, and the houses built over it, and the pier and harbour----"

"Ah, is it like that?" cried his companion, clasping her hands. "Is it like St. Nazaire? Are there boats?--and an old church?--and narrow streets? Oh, that we go there now!"

"Would you rather see that than drink Lord Earlshope's _vin ordinaire_?" said the Whaup, with a cold severity.

"Pah!" she cried, petulantly. "You do give me no peace with your Lord Earlshope! I wish you would fight him, not frighten me with such nonsense. I will believe you are jealous--you stupid boy! But if you will take me to St. Nazaire--to this place--I will forgive you everything, and I will--what can I do for you!--I will kiss you--I will sew a handkerchief for you--anything."

The Whaup blushed very red, but frowned all the same.

"I will take you to Saltcoats," said he; "but we in this country don't like young ladies to be so free with their favours."

Coquette looked rather taken down, and only ventured to say, by way of submissive apology--

"You are my cousin, you know."

They were about to slip out of the house unperceived, when Leezibeth confronted them.

"Beg your pardon, Miss, but I would like to hae a word wi' ye," she said, in a determined tone, as she blocked up their way.

The Whaup began to look fierce.

"It is seventeen years come Michaelmas," said Leezibeth, in set and measured tones, "since I cam' to this house, and a pious and God-fearing house it has been, as naebody will gainsay. We who are but servants have done our pairt, I hope, to preserve its character; though in His sight there are nae servants and nae masters, for he poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, and yet setteth the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him families like a flock. I wouldna distinguish between master and servant in the house; but when the master is blind to the things of his household, then it would ill become an honest servant, not afraid to give her testimony----"

"Leezibeth," said the Whaup, "your talk is like a crop o' grass after three months' rain. It's good for neither man nor beast, being but a _blash o' water_."

"As for ye, sir," retorted Leezibeth, angrily, "it was an ill day for ye that ye turned aside to dangle after an idle woman----"

"As sure as daith, Leezibeth," said the Whaup, in his strongest vernacular, "I'll gar ye gang skelpin' through the air like a splinter if ye dinna keep a civil tongue in your head!"

"But what is it all about?" said Coquette, in deep dismay. "What have I done? Have I done any more wrong? I know not--you must tell me----"

"And is it not true, Miss," said Leezibeth, fixing her keen grey eye on the culprit, "that ye daur to keep a crucifix--the symbol of the woman that sits on seven hills--right aboon your head in your bed; and have introduced this polluting thing into an honest man's house, to work wickedness wi', and set a snare before our feet?"

"I do not know what you mean by seven hills, or a woman," said Coquette, humbly. "I thought the cross was a symbol of all religion. If it annoys you, I will take it down, yes--but my mother gave it to me--I cannot put it away altogether. I will hide it, if it annoys you; but I cannot--surely you will not ask me to part with it altogether----"

"You shall not part with it," said the Whaup, drawing himself up to his full height. "Let me see the man or woman who will touch that crucifix, though it had on it the woman o' Babylon herself!"

Leezibeth looked dazed for a moment. It was almost impossible that such words should have been uttered by the eldest son of the Minister; and for a moment she was inclined to disbelieve the testimony of her ears. Yet there before her stood the lad, tall, proud, handsome, with his eyes burning and his teeth set. And there beside him stood the witch-woman who had wrought this perversion in him--who had come to work destruction in this quiet fold.

"I maun gang to the Minister," said Leezibeth, in despair. "Andrew and I maun settle this maitter, or else set out, in our auld age, for a new resting-place."

"And the sooner the Manse is rid of two cantankerous old idiots the better!" said the Whaup.

Leezibeth bestowed upon him a glance more of wonder and fear than of anger, and then went her way.

"Come!" said the Whaup to his companion. "We maun run for it, or we shall see no St. Nazaire this night."

Then Coquette, feeling very guilty, found herself stealing away from the Manse, led by the Minister's daredevil son.