Chapter XXI Mine Ancient Sweetheart
After he was gone I cast about in my mind, and, for the life of me, I could not decide whether the fellow had been lying to me or not. It was indeed a thing to be wondered at, how this chance scoundrel should know (what I had thought known only to my Lord of Cassillis and my master) that after the fight in the barn I had carried away, clenched in my hand, the key of the treasure chest of Kelwood.
Now, as was natural after this encounter, the goodwife of the Grieve’s house could not make enough of me. Indeed, if anything, she made too much of me, for, instead of suffering her daughter and Nell to entertain me as before, while she went about her work, she thought it her duty as soon as one of them came in and sat down, to leave that which she was about, and come and sit with us for company. Now Mistress Allison was a good woman and agreeable of her tongue, but I did not feel the necessity for this byordinar kindness.
Yet it was not easy to alter it. Then in the evenings came Robert Harburgh to see me. At first he came once a week while my wounds kept me weak and fretful. Then, as I grew better, he came twice. And when I was able to sit up, it came about that he would arrive every night and bide till bedtime—so that at last I was almost shamed to have him sitting there, and feared that he might be burdensome to Kate Allison and her mother.
For Robert Harburgh had but little to say, but he ever looked and proved kindly. Also he brought me many things from Maybole and elsewhere—oranges and wine that had been shipped to Irvine from foreign parts, neckerchiefs also for Kate and her mother. A quiet, down-looking fellow was Robert, something dull of the uptake, and with little to say for himself; but a most noble sworder, and wholly without care for his body when it came to the fighting.
Now it seems a strange thing that I, who had so long played the lover to Kate Allison, should be laid by the heels in her father’s house, hearing the whip and frisk of her gown about the chambers all the day. And I still loved to hear it, for she was a bonny lass—and kind, kind to me. Also her eyes were pleasant, and had both mischief and tears in them—not like Nell Kennedy’s, that held only mischief and scorn—save once, as it seemed to me, a little while when I was deadly fevered, and when Dr Low of Ayr, the Earl of Cassillis’s own physician, ordered me herb-drinks, and shook his doting wiseacre’s head over me like a most melancholious billy-goat. Then for a little Nell’s eyes were quiet and sorrowful.
But it did not last. For by the time that I could get a scheme laid to take advantage of the gleam of kindness, she was again but mine own ill-set lassie-boy of a Nell, and we were throng at the sparring and quarrelling just as usual. But, as I say, Kate Allison was wondrously kind to me. Many a night when the weather was hot, and my wounds paining me as though they would break again open, would she sit by me with clear caller water from the spring, tirelessly changing the soft linen cloths. And when the drops of fever-sweat stood on my brow, she would touch them gently away, and lay her own cool cheek against my forehead. Ay, and when I put my hand up and drew down her face, she would kiss me right frankly upon the lips. Yet, as I judged, not quite as of old. But I thought it might be the illness that made the difference, for with being sick in body and feverish in mind, nothing tastes the same. And so I thought it might be also with kisses.
But after I had grown stronger, I shall ever mind me of one night when I got a horrid awakening. It was a quiet gloaming. Kate Allison and I had the house to ourselves—to which, speaking for myself, I did not wholly object. I lay stretched upon the long oaken settle, on cushions which Nell Kennedy had brought from the great house. Kate sat beside me on a stool and leaned an elbow on the oak’s edge. She was unwontedly silent, and sometimes I touched her cheek lightly with my hand. It was a most pleasant night, and my mind was full of pity and consideration for her. I bethought me that, though doubtless I could have looked higher, I might do worse in time than think of settling down with a sweet and pleasant lass like Kate Allison. It was also touching to me that she should never have wavered from loving me, all the time that I had been forgetting her and thinking of others. But that, I said to myself, is the way of women.
We were silent a great while, with the silence that needs no speech, and my heart had grown melting and kindly to the young lass, even as it had been in old days. All of a sudden she spoke.
‘Launce,’ said she, ‘I’m going to be married!’
She never moved her head off my shoulder, leaning with her elbow on the edge of the settle, and looking away from me out at the door. Neither did she draw her hand from mine, but rather settled it the more kindly, nestling it in my palm.
Yet anyone might have knocked me off the oaken settle with a straw.
‘Married!’ said I. ‘Ay, Kate, lass, of course you are going to be married. ’Tis what you and I must come to. I assure you I oftentimes have been thinking about that. There are not the makings of an old maid about you!’
This I said and waited for the answer of her eyes, in order to laugh again and make my jest. But she did not look at me. I do not think she heard me.
‘I am to be married on Thursday!’ she said calmly.
‘Kate Allison!’ I said, trying to turn up her head that I might look into her eyes. I thought to see the make-believe in them. But as women know how to do, she evaded me without seeming to be conscious of it.
‘Why, Kate Allison, sweetheart!’ said I, ‘how can I be ready by Thursday, laid here on my back, with only you to care for me?’
‘I am to be married on Thursday to Robert Harburgh!’ she said.
Then I drew my hand away, and sat as erect and stern as the settle and my sickness would let me, for it is hard to appear dignified and like a soldier, lying on a couch and wrapped in women’s shawls.
‘I am deceived!’ cried I, ‘mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, has betrayed me, coming to steal that which was dear to me when I lay most weak and weary.’
And I think I made as if to rise, for I had an idea that I must go and get my sword—though what for, I cannot now imagine. But Kate Allison gently put me back on the pillows, and sat down beside me, taking one of my hands again, laying it against her cheek, and drawing at the same time her stool nearer to me.
I tried to withdraw my hand from hers, but being weak she masterfully kept it, so that the tears sprang to my eyes for very helplessness and anger.
‘You have played with me and deceived me, Kate Allison,’ I cried, as soon as I could command my voice; ‘you have forgotten the old days and all that we were to one another.’
Nevertheless Kate Allison never winced but let me say my say out. And by this I knew that the old days were gone indeed. She was mightily set in her mind.
‘Launce,’ she said gently, ‘Launce, dear sweetheart, hearken—I am fond of you. No lass in Carrick but would like you for a lad and a lover, even for your very feults, which are what all may see.’
What she might have meant I have even yet no idea.
‘Ye are perfect for a lad that comes courting, and I liked ye fine—ay, and like ye yet. But I saw lang syne that the lads that court best are not the men that marry best.’
‘Women are all traitors!’ said I, with indignation tingling through my body; ‘they kiss and they forget. And then in a trice they go kiss another—’
‘Ay,’ replied Kate Allison, with a little more gravity, ‘and I mean to have a short word with you on that very thing.’
She paused for a moment, and looked staidly and thoughtfully out of the window. I believed at nineteen that I wholly understood all women. But now I know that when I am twice that and more, the simplest seeming of them will be able to wrap me in her daidly-apron, and sell me in the market for green cabbage.
‘Listen, Launce, my dear,’ she said. ‘I was but a Grieve’s lass, and not unbonny of my face, so you courted me. You longed after kissing, being a heartsome lad with a way with you and a glint in your e’e. And so you kissed me, and in my youth and folly I said ye not nay. But you went over the hill to the Boreland and you kissed Grace, and you kissed the lass at the house of the Red Moss—and you thought that I would never know it. And more, you expected that none else should ever come near to kiss me. Ay, and would have waxed mightily indignant and flashed a brave sword had any dared, for that is the excellent way of the lads that come courting—but not at all the way of the men that wise women marry.’
I was mazed and confounded before her, but could not answer a word, for the thing was as true as if she had read my heart. Where had the young lass so learned the ways of men?
‘Forgotten your kisses, Launce?’ she went on. ‘And what of them? I count kisses but as the X’s and O’s that bairns make on the flags with soft cam stone—gone when the game is over.’
‘The home-coming from the fair at Maybole and the kisses that you and I then kissed,’ said I, bitterly, ‘were these X’s or O’s? I rede ye tell me!’
‘Launce,’ said Kate Allison, ‘we dreamed a pleasant dream, you and I. We have awaked. It is a new day. We wash the night fantasies off our faces, and are ready to meet the morning with the sunshine in our eyes. Together we have sipped the cream. It is time to drink the milk. We have gathered the flowers—let us look to the fruit.’
‘Kate,’ said I, more kindly, ‘when did you think all these things?’
For the lassie made me marvel with the aptness of her speech, and ashamed with her plain saying of things that I had hardly named within myself.
‘Ah,’ she said gently and wisely, ‘the thoughts of a lass when a lad comes courting her, are more than she tells with her mouth. For many a kiss is honey-sweet on the lips, but bitter as gall in the heart. Yet so has it not been with yours and mine. We loved and we part, even as the way-gaun of the wind that kissed the apple blossom in the spring when the year was young and glad.’
She made to rise from her seat.
‘I must go,’ she said.
‘To go meet Robert Harburgh and to kiss him. I thought I knew his whistle!’ said I, with my heart raging angry and disconsolate in spite of her fine words, which I could not answer.
‘Ay,’ she said, rising and setting her lips tenderly to my brow, which I pettishly turned away, being weakly sullen, ‘even so—to meet Robert Harburgh and to kiss him.’
And with that she passed to the door. She turned ere she went out to say a last word.
‘And you, Launce, my lad, will also one day desire to leave kissing comfits and find abiding love. And you need not go far afield to look for it either.’
Thus I was left alone with a heaving heart. And I am not ashamed to say that I wept bitterly for poor Launce Kennedy, who had none to care for him in all the wide lone world, in which he was now so sore wounded and cast aside like an old shoe or a broken sword.
But even as I wept and pitied myself, Nell Kennedy danced in, merry as the morn, and brought a great spray of belated hawthorn to set in a dish of water to keep the room sweet.
And I declare I never knew the young lass look so winsome before.