The Black Douglas, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [best books under 200 pages .TXT] 📗

me an answer."
"Then," said the girl, "you will be the more in the line of your duty, which allows not much sleep o' nights. You are but a silly, petulant boy for all your fine captaincy. I wish it had been Landless Jock. He would never have vexed me with foolish questions at such a time."
"But I love you, and I demand an answer," cried Sholto, fuming. "Do you love the Earl?"
"What do you think yourself now?" she said, looking up at him with an inimitable slyness, and pronouncing her words so as to imitate the broad simplicity of countryside speech.
Sholto vented a short gasp or inarticulate snort of anger, at which Maud Lindesay started back with affected terror.
"Do not fright a poor maid," she said. "Will you put me in the castle dungeon if I do not answer? Tell me exactly what you want me to say, and I will say it, most mighty captain."
And she made him the prettiest little courtesy, turning at the same time her eyes in mock humility on the ground.
"Oh, Maud Lindesay," said Sholto, with a little conflicting sob in his throat, ill becoming so noted a warrior as the captain of the castle-guard of the Black Douglas, "if you knew how I loved you, you would not treat me thus."
The girl came nearer to him and laid a white and gentle hand on the sleeve of his blue archer's coat.
"Nay, lad," she said more soberly, lifting a finger to his face, "surely you are no milksop to mind how a girl flouts you. Love the Earl--say you? Well, is it not our duty to the bread we eat? Is he not worthy? Is he not the head of our house?"
"Cheat me not with words. The Earl loves you," said Sholto, lifting his head haughtily out of her reach. (To have one's chin pushed this way and that by a girl's forefinger, and as it were considered critically from various points of view, may be pleasant, but it interferes most seriously with dignity.)
"He may, indeed," drolled the minx, "one can never tell. But he has never said so. He is perhaps afraid, being born without the self-conceit of some people--archers of the guard, fledgling captains, and such-like gentrice."
"Do you love him?" reiterated Sholto, determinedly.
"I will tell you for that gold buckle," said Maud, calmly pointing with her finger.
Instantly Sholto pulled the cap from his head, undid the pin of the archery prize, and thrust it into his wicked sweetheart's hands.
She received it with a little cry of joy, then she pressed it to her lips. Sholto, rejoicing at heart, moved a step nearer to her. But, in spite of her arch delight, she was on the alert, for she retreated deftly and featly within the chamber door of the Fair Maid of Galloway. There was still more mirthful wickedness in her eyes.
"Love the Earl?--Of course I do. Indeed, I doat upon him," she said. "How I shall love this buckle, just because his hand gave it to you!"
And with that she shut to the door.
Sholto, in act to advance, stood a moment poised on one foot like a goose. Then with a heart blazing with anger, and one of the first oaths that had ever passed his lips, he turned on his heel and strode away.
"I will never think of her again--I will never see her. I will go to France and perish in battle. I will throw me in the castle pool. I will--"
So the poor lad retreated, muttering hot and angry words, all his heart sore within him because of the cruelty of this girl.
But he had not proceeded twenty steps along the corridor, when he heard the door softly open and a low voice whispered, "Sholto! Sholto! I want you, Sholto!"
He bent his brows and strode manfully on as if he had not heard a word.
"Sholto!--dear Sholto! Do not go, I need you."
Against his will he turned, and, seeing the head of Maud Lindesay, her pouting lips and beckoning finger, he went sulkily back.
"Well?" he said, with the stern curtness of a military commander, as he stood before her.
She held the iron lamp in her hand. The wick had fallen aside and was now wasting itself in a broad, unequal yellow flame. The maid of honour looked at it in perplexity, knitting her pretty brows in a mock frown.
"It burned me as I was ordering my hair," she said. "I cannot blow it out. I dare not. Will you--will you blow it out for me, Captain Sholto?"
She spoke with a sweet childlike humility.
And she held the lamp up so that the iron handle was almost touching her soft cheek. There was a dancing challenge in her dark eyes and her lips smiled dangerously red. She could not, of course, have known that the light made her look so beautiful, or she would have been more careful.
Sholto stood still a moment, at wrestle with himself, trying to conquer his dignity, and to retain his attitude of stern disapproval.
But the girl swept her lashes up towards him, dropped them again dark as night upon her cheek, and anon looked a second time at him.
"I am sorry," she said, more than ever like a child. "Forgive me, and--the lamp is so hot."
Now Sholto was young and inexperienced, but he was not quite a fool. He stooped and blew out the light, and the next moment his lips rested upon other lips which, as it had been unconsciously, resigned their soft sweetness to his will.
Then the door closed, and he heard the click of the lock as the bolts were shot from within. The gallery ran round and round about him like a clacking wheel. His heart beat tumultuously, and there was a strange humming sound in his ears.
The captain of the guard stumbled half distracted down the turret stair.
The old world had been destroyed in a moment and he was walking in a new, where perpetual roses bloomed and the spring birds sang for evermore. He knew not, this poor foolish Sholto, that he had much to learn ere he should know all the tricks and stratagems of this most naughty and prettily disdainful minx, Mistress Maud Lindesay.
But for that night at least he thought he knew her heart and soul, which made him just as happy.


CHAPTER XVIII
THE MORNING LIGHT
In the morning Sholto MacKim had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and struggled, and held up ineffectual hands. And when his lips did reach their goal, it was generally upon the bridge of a nose or a tip of an ear. He could not remember any especial pleasure accompanying the rite.
But this! The bolt of an arbalast could not have given him a more instant or tremendous shock. His nerves still quivered responsive to the tremulous yielding of the lips he had touched for a moment in the dark of the doorway. He felt that never could he be the same man he had been before. Deep in his heart he laughed at the thought.
And then again, with a quick revulsion, the return wave came upon him. "How, if she be as untouched as her beauty is fresh, has she learned that skill in caressing?"
He paused to think the matter over.
"I remember my father saying that a wise man should always mistrust a girl who kisses overwell."
Then again his better self would reassert itself.
"No," he would argue, tramping up and down the corridor, wheeling in the short bounds of the turnpike head, and again returning upon his own footsteps, "why should I belie her? She is as pure as the air--only, of course, she is different to all others. She speaks differently; her eyes are different, her hair, her hands--why should she not be different also in this?"
But when Maud Lindesay met Sholto in the morning, coming suddenly upon him as he stood, with a pale face and dark rings of sleeplessness about his eyes, as he looked meditatively out upon the broad river and the blue smoke of the morning campfires, there was yet another difference to be revealed to him. He had expected that, like others, she would be confused and bashful meeting him thus in the daylight, after--well, after the volcanic extinguishing of the lamp.
But there she stood, dainty and calm under the morning sunshine, in fresh clean gown of lace and varied whiteness, her face grave as a benediction, her eyes deep and cool like the water of the castle well.
Sholto started violently at sight of her, recovered himself, and eagerly held out both his hands.
"Maud," he said hoarsely, and then again, in a lower tone, "sweetest Maud."
But pretty Mistress Lindesay only gazed at him with a certain reserved and grave surprise, looking him straight in the face and completely ignoring his outstretched hands.
"Captain Sholto," she said steadily and calmly, "the Lady Margaret desires to see you and to thank you for your last night's care and watchfulness. Will you do me the honour to follow me to her chamber?"
There was no yielding softness about this maiden of the morning hours, no conscious droop and a swift uplifting of penitent eyelids, no lingering glances out of love-weighted eyes. A brisk and practical little lady rather, her feet pattering most purposefully along the flagged passages and skipping faster than even Sholto could follow her. But at the top of the second stairs he was overquick for her. By taking the narrow edges of the steps he reached the landing level with his mistress.
His desire was to put out his hand to circle her lithe waist, for nothing is so certainly reproductive of its own species as a first kiss. But he had reckoned without the lady's mutual intent and favour, which in matters of this kind are proverbially important. Mistress Maud eluded him, without appearing to do so, and stood farther off, safely poised for flight, looking down at him with cold, reproachful eyes.
"Maud Lindesay, have you forgotten last night and the lamp?" he asked indignantly.
"What may you mean, Captain Sholto?" she said, with wonderment in her tone, "Margaret and I never use lamps. Candles are so much safer, especially at night."


CHAPTER XIX
LA JOYEUSE BAITS HER HOOK
On the morrow, the ambassador of France being confined to his room with a slight quinsy caught from the marshy nature of the environment of Thrieve, the Earl escorted the Lady Sybilla to the field of the tourney, where, as Queen of Beauty, her presence could not be dispensed with.
The Maid Margaret, the Earl's sister, remained also in the castle, not having yet recovered from her fright of the preceding evening.
With her was Maud Lindesay and her mother--"the Auld Leddy," as she was called throughout all the wide dominions of her son.
In spite of his weariness Sholto led his archer guard in person to the field of the tournament. For this day was the day of the High Sport, and many lances would be splintered, and often would the commonalty need to be scourged from the barriers.
But ere he went Sholto summoned two of the staunchest fellows of his company, Andro, called the Penman, and his brother John. Then, having posted them at either end of the corridor in which were the chambers occupied by the two