CHAPTER XXXII. LOVE OR DUTY.

I passed by the little Clachan of St. John’s Town of Dalry, leaving it stretching away up the braeface on my right hand. A little way beyond the kirk I struck into the fringing woods of Earlstoun which, like an army of train-bands in Lincoln green, beset the grey tower.

I was on the walk along which I had once before come with her. The water alternately gloomed and sparkled beneath. The fish sulked and waved lazy tails, anchored in the water-swirls below the falls, their heads steady to the stream as the needle to the pole.

The green of summer was yet untouched by autumn frosts, save for a russet hair or two on the outmost plumes of the birks that wept above the stream.

Suddenly something gay glanced through the wavering sunsprays of the woodland and the green scatter of the shadows. A white{294} summer gown, a dainty hat white-plumed, but beneath the bright feather a bowed head, a girl with tears in her eyes—and lo! Mary Gordon standing alone and in sorrow by the water-pools of the Deuch.

I had never learned to do such things, and even now I cannot tell what it was that came over me. For without a moment’s hesitation I kneeled on one knee, and taking her hand, I kissed it with infinite love and respect.

She turned quickly from me, dashing the tears from her face with her hand.

“Quintin!” she cried—I think before she thought.

“Mary!” I said, for the first time in my life saying the word to my lady’s face.

She held her hand with the palm pressed against my breast, pushing me from her that she might examine my face.

“Why are you here?” she asked anxiously, “you have heard what they say of my father?”

“I have heard, and I come to know?” I said quietly.

She clasped her hands in front of her breast and then let them fall loosely down in a sort of slack despair.{295}

“I will tell you,” she said, “it is partly true. But the worst is not true!”

She was silent for a while, as if she were mastering herself to speak.

Then she burst out suddenly, “But what right have you or any other to demand such things of me? Is not my father Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, and who has name or fame like him in all Scotland? They that accuse him are but jealous of him—even you would be glad like the others to see him humiliated—brought low!”

“You do me wrong,” said I, yet more quietly; “you know it. Mary, I came because I have no friends on earth like you and Alexander Gordon. And the thing troubled me.”

“I know—I know,” she said, distractedly. “I think it hath well-nigh driven me mad, as it hath my poor father.”

She put her hand to her forehead and pressed it, as if it had been full of a great throbbing pain.

I wished I could have held it for her.

Then we moved side by side a little along the path, both being silent. My thoughts were with hers. I saw her pain; I felt her pride, her reluctance to speak.{296}

Presently we came to a retired place where there was an alcove cut out of the cliff, re-entrant, filled with all coolness and the stir of leaves.

Hither, as if moved by one instinct, we repaired. Mary sat her down upon the stone seat. I stood before her.

There was a long waiting without a word spoken, so that a magpie came and flicked his tail on a branch near by without seeing us. Then cocking his eye downward, he fled with loud screams of anger and protestation.

“I will tell you all!” she said, suddenly.

But all the same it seemed as if she could not find it in her heart to begin.

“You know my father—root and branch you know him,” she said, at last; “or else I could not tell you. He is a man. He has so great a repute, so full a record of bravery, that none dares to point the finger. Through all Scotland and the Low Countries it is sufficient for my father to say ‘I am Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun!’

“But as I need not tell you, a very strong man is a very weak man. And so they trapped him, William Boyd, who called himself his friend, being the traitor. For my father had{297} known him in Holland and aided him with money and providing when he studied as one of the lads of the Hill-folk at the University of Groningen.

“Now this a man like William Boyd could not forgive—neither repay. But in silence he hated and bode his time. For, though I am but young, I see that nothing breeds hate and malice more readily than a helping hand extended to a bad man.

“So devising evil to my father in secret, he met him at the Clachan of Saint John as he came home from the market at Kirkcudbright, where he had been dining with Kenmure and my Lord Maxwell. Quintin, you know how it is with my father when he comes home from market—he is kind, he is generous. The world is not large enough to hold his heart. Wine may be in, but wit is not out.

“So Alexander Gordon being in this mood, Boyd and two or three of his creatures met him in the highway.

“My father had oftentimes thwarted and opposed Boyd. But now his stomach was warm and generous within him. So he cried to them, ‘A fair good e’en to ye, gentlemen.’

“Whereat they glanced cunningly at one{298} another, hearing the thick stammer in my father’s voice.

“‘And good e’en to you, Earlstoun!’ they answered, taking off their hats to him.

“The courtesy touched my father. It seemed that they wished to be friends, and nothing touches a big careless gentleman like Alexander Gordon more than the thought that others desire to make up a quarrel and he will not.

“So with that he cried, ‘Let us bury bygones and be friends.’

“‘Agreed,’ answered Boyd, waving his hand jovially; let us go to the change-house and toast the reconciliation in a tass of brandy,’

“This he said knowing that my father was on his way from market.”

“For this,” said I, not thinking of my place and dignity, “will I reckon with William Boyd.”

Mary Gordon went on without noticing my interruption.

“So though my father told them that he could not go, that his wife waited for him by the croft entrance and that his daughter was coming down the water-side to meet him, yet upon their crying out that he must not be {299}hen-pecked in the matter of the drowning of an ancient enmity, my father consented to go with them.”

Mary Gordon looked before her a long time without speaking, as though little liking to tell what followed. “They knew,” she said, “that he was to preside that night at a meeting of the eldership and commissioners of the Hill-folk. So they brought him as in the change-house they had made him to the meeting.”

There was a long silence.

“And this was all?” I asked. For the accusation which had come to me had been far graver than this.

“As I live and must die, that is all. The other things which they testify that he did that night are but the blackness and foulness of their own hearts.”

“I will go speak with him,” I said, moving as to pass on.

Mary Gordon had been seated upon a wall which jutted out over the water. She leaped to her feet in an instant and caught me by the wrist, looking with an eager and passionate regard into my eyes.

“You must not—you shall not!” she cried. “My father is not to be spoken to. He is not{300} himself. He has sworn that he will answer no man, speak to no man, have dealings with no man, till the shame be staunched and his innocency made to appear.”

“But I will bring him to himself,” I said, “I will reason with him, and that most tenderly.”

“Nay,” she said, taking me eagerly by the breast of my coat, “I tell you he will not listen to a word.”

“It is my duty,” I answered.

“Wherefore?” she cried, sharply. “You are not his minister.”

“No,” said I, “but I am more. I am both his friend and yours.”

“Do you mean to reprove him?” she asked.

“It is my duty—in part,” said I, for the thought of mine office had come upon me, and I feared that for this girl’s sake I might even be ready ignominiously to demit and decline my plain duty.

“For that wherein he has given the unrighteous cause to speak reproachfully, I will reprove him,” I said. “For the rest, I will aid, support, and succour him in all that one man may do to another. By confession of his fault,{301} such as it has been, he may yet keep the Cause from being spoken against.”

“Ah, you do not know my father, to speak thus of him,” Mary Gordon cried, clasping her hands. “When he is in his fury he cares for neither man nor beast. He might do you a hurt, even to the touching of your life. Ah, do not go to him.” (Here she clasped her hands, and looked at me with such sweet, petitionary graciousness that my heart became as wax within me.) “Let him come to himself. What are reproof and hard words, besides the shame that comes when such a man as my father sits face to face with the sins of his own heart?”

Almost I had given way, but the thought of the dread excommunication, and the danger which his children must also incur, compelled me.

“Hear me, Mary,” I said, “I must speak to him. For all our sakes—yours as well—I must go instantly to Alexander Gordon.”

She waved her hand impatiently.

“Do not go,” she said. “Can you not trust me? I thought you—you once told me that you loved me. And if you had loved me, I do not know, I might—{302}—”

She paused. A wild hope—warm, tender, gloriously insurgent, rose-coloured—welled up triumphantly in my heart. My blood hummed in my ears.

“She would love me; she would give herself to me. I cannot offend her. This alone is my happiness. This only is life. What matters all else?”

And I was about to give way. If I had so much as looked in her face, or met her eyes, I must have fallen from my intent.

But I called to mind the path by which I had been led, the oath that had been laid upon me to speak faithfully. The lonely way of a man—a sinful man trying to do the right—gripped me like a vice, and compelled me against my will.

“Mary,” I said, solemnly, “I love you more than life—more, perchance, than I love God. But I cannot lay aside, nor yet shut out the doing of my duty.”

She thrust her hand out suddenly, passionately, from her, as if casting me out of her sight for ever. She set her kerchief to her eyes.

“You have chosen!” she cried. “Go, then!”

“Mary,” I said, turning to follow her.{303}

All suddenly she turned upon me and stamped her foot.

“I dare you to speak with me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger. “I thought you were a man, and you are no better than a machine. You love! You know not the A B C of it. You have never passed the hornbook. I doubt not that you broke that poor lassie’s heart down there in the farm by the water-side. She loved a stone and she died. Now you tell me that you love me, and the first thing I ask of you you refuse, though it is for my own father, and I entreat you with tears!”

“Mary,” I began to say quietly, “you do me great wrong. Let me tell you——”

But she turned away down the path. I followed after, and at the parting of the ways to house and stable she turned on me again like a lioness. “Oh, go, I tell you! Go!” she cried. “Do your precious duty. But from this day forth never, never dare to utter word to Mary Gordon again!”