The Black Douglas Part 24

"Nay, mother mine," he answered, smiling, "do not fear, I do but ride to visit the Chancellor Crichton in his castle, and also to bid farewell to the French amba.s.sador, who abode here as our guest."

A sudden light shone in upon the mind of Maud Lindesay.

"'Tis all that French minx!" she whispered in Sholto's ear, "she hath bewitched him. No one need try to stop him now."

His mother went on, with an added anxiety in her voice.

"But you will not take my little David with you? You will leave me one son here to comfort me in my loneliness and old age?"

The Earl seemed about to yield, being, indeed, careless whether David went with him or no.

"Mother," cried David, coming running forth from the castle, "you must not persuade William to make me stay at home. I shall never be a man if I am kept among women. There is Sholto MacKim, he is little older than I, and already he hath won the archery prize and the sword-play, and hath fought in a tourney and been knighted--while I have done nothing except pull gowans with Maud Lindesay and play chuckie stones with Margaret there."

And at that moment Sholto wished that this fate had been his, and the honours David's. He told himself that he would willingly have given up his very knighthood that he might abide near that dainty form and witching face. He tortured himself with the thought that Maud would listen to others as she had listened to him; that she would practise on others that heart-breaking slow droop and quick uplift of the eyelashes which he knew so well. Who might not be at hand to aid her to blow out her lamp when the guards were set of new in the corridors of Thrieve?

"Mother," the Earl answered, "David speaks good sense. He will never make a man or a Douglas if he is to bide here within this warded isle.

He must venture forth into the world of men and women, and taste a man's pleasures and chance a man's dangers like the rest."

"But are you certain that you will bring him safe back again to me?"

said his mother, wistfully. "Remember, he is so young and eke so reckless."

"Nay," cried David, eagerly, "I am no younger than my cousin James was when he fought the strongest man in Scotland, and I warrant I could ride a course as well as Hughie Douglas of Avondale, though William chose him for the tourney and left me to bite my thumbs at home."

The lady sighed and looked at her sons, one of them but a youth and the other no more than a boy.

"Was there ever a Douglas yet who would take any advice but from his own desire?" she said, looking down at them like a douce barn-door fowl who by chance has reared a pair of eaglets. "Lads, ye are over strong for your mother. But I will not sleep nor eat aright till I have my David back again, and can see him riding his horse homeward through the ford."

CHAPTER XXVIII

ON THE CASTLE ROOF

Maud Lindesay parted from Sholto upon the roof of the keep. She had gone up thither to watch the cavalcade ride off where none could spy upon her, and Sholto, noting the flutter of white by the battlements, ran up thither also, pretending that he had forgotten something, though he was indeed fully armed and ready to mount and ride.

Maud Lindesay was leaning over the battlements of the castle, and, hearing a step behind her, she looked about with a start of apparent surprise.

The after dew of recent tears still glorified her eyes.

"Oh, Sholto," she cried, "I thought you were gone; I was watching for you to ride away. I thought--"

But Sholto, seeing her disorder, and having little time to waste, came quickly forward and took her in his arms without apology or prelude, as is (they say) wisest in such cases.

"Maud," he said, his utterance quick and hoa.r.s.e, "we go into the house of our enemies. Thirty knights and no more accompany my lord, who might have ridden out with three thousand in his train."

"'Tis all that witch woman," cried the girl; "can you not advise him?"

"The Earl of Douglas did not ask my advice," said Sholto, a little dryly, being eager to turn the conversation upon his own matters and to his own advantage. "And, moreover, if he rides into danger for the sake of love--why, I for one think the more of him for it."

"But for such a creature," objected Maud Lindesay. "For any true maid it were most right and proper! Where is there a n.o.ble lady in Scotland who would not have been proud to listen to him? But he must needs run after this mongrel French woman!"

"Even Mistress Maud Lindesay would accept him, would she?" said Sholto, somewhat bitterly, releasing her a little.

"Maud Lindesay is no great lady, only the daughter of a poor baron of the North, and much bound to my Lord Douglas by grat.i.tude for that which he hath done for her family. As you right well know, Maud Lindesay is little better than a tiremaiden in the house of my lord."

"Nay," said Sholto, "I crave your pardon. I meant it not. I am hasty of words, and the time is short. Will you pardon me and bid me farewell, for the horses are being led from stall, and I cannot keep my lord waiting?"

"You are glad to go," she said reproachfully; "you will forget us whom you leave behind you here. Indeed, you care not even now, so that you are free to wander over the world and taste new pleasures. That is to be a man, indeed. Would that I had been born one!"

"Nay, Maud," said Sholto, trying to draw the girl again near him, because she kept him at arm's length by the unyielding strength of her wrist, "none shall ever come near my heart save Maud Lindesay alone! I would that I could ride away as sure of you as you are of Sholto MacKim!"

"Indeed," cried the girl, with some show of returning spirit, "to that you have no claim. Never have I said that I loved you, nor indeed that I thought about you at all."

"It is true," answered Sholto, "and yet--I think you will remember me when the lamps are blown out. G.o.d speed, belovedst, I hear the trumpet blow, and the horses trampling."

For out on the green before the castle the Earl's guard was mustering, and Fergus MacCulloch, the Earl's trumpeter, blew an impatient blast.

It seemed to speak to this effect:

_"Hasten ye, hasten ye, come to the riding, Hasten ye, hasten ye, lads of the Dee-- Douglasdale come, come Galloway, Annandale, Galloway blades are the best of the three!"_

Sholto held out his arms at the first burst of the stirring sound, and the girl, all her wayward pride falling from her in a moment, came straight into them.

"Good-by, my sweetheart," he said, stooping to kiss the lips that now said him not nay, but which quivered pitifully as he touched them, "G.o.d knows whether these eyes shall rest again on the desire of my heart."

Maud looked into his face steadily and searchingly.

"You are sure you will not forget me, Sholto?" she said; "you will love me as much to-morrow when you are far away, and think me as fair as you do when you hold me thus in your arms upon the battlements of Thrieve?"

Before Sholto had time to answer, the trumpet rang out again, with a call more instant and imperious than before.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BUT THERE COMETH A NIGHT WHEN EVERY ONE OF US WATCHES THE GREY SHALLOWS TO THE EAST FOR THOSE THAT SHALL RETURN NO MORE!"]

Sholto clasped her close to him as the second summons shrilled up into the air.

"G.o.d keep my little la.s.s!" he said; "fear not, Maud, I have never loved any but you!"

He was gone. And through her tears Maud Lindesay watched him from the top of the great square keep, as he rode off gallantly behind the Earl and his brother.

"In time past I have dreamed," she thought to herself, "that I loved this one and that; but it was not at all like this. I cannot put him out of my mind for a moment, even when I would!"

As the brothers William and David Douglas crossed the rough bridge of pine thrown over the narrows of the Dee, they looked back simultaneously. Their mother stood on the green moat platform of Thrieve, with their little sister Margaret holding up her train with a pretty modesty. She waved not a hand, fluttered no kerchief of farewell, only stood sadly watching the sons with whom she had travailed, like one who watches the dear dead borne to their last resting-place.

"So," she communed, "even thus do the women of the Douglas House watch their beloveds ride out of sight. And so for many times they return through the ford at dawn or dusk. But there cometh a night when every one of us watches the grey shallows to the east for those that shall return no more!"

"See, see!" cried the little Margaret, "look, dear mother, they have taken off their caps, and even Sholto hath his steel bonnet in his hand. They are bidding us farewell. I wish Maudie had been here to see. I wonder where she has hidden herself. How surprised she will be to find that they are gone!"

It was a true word that the little Maid of Galloway spoke, for, according to the pretty custom of the young Earl, the cavalcade had halted ere they plunged into the woods of Kelton. The Douglas lads took their bonnets in their hands. Their dark hair was stirred by the breeze. Sholto also bared his head and looked towards the speck of white which he could just discern on the summit of the frowning keep.