The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

Then went the Earl out to bring in my Nell, and I listened to the minister of Edinburgh speaking. Yet, on my life I could not fix my mind on a word he said, for there was a jangling as of many bells in mine ears, and all the pulses of my life beat together. Then knew I of a surety that none had power to touch my heart like Nell Kennedy, the lass that would not need to change her name.

At last the door opened and she entered—leaning on the Earl's arm she came. There was a rim of gold about her hair like a coronet. And John of Cassillis bent over to me, as he gave her into my hand. 'Take her,' he said, 'I have set a coronet about her brows for to-day. She is in haste to be wed, or I might have put a real one there. And what had Sir Launcelot done then, poor thing?'

And I think the cold, tall Earl John was more than a little fond of our Nell, concerning which I often rally her now.

So Nell and I were married. And as though he had known her and her teasing temper, Maister Robert Bruce paused long on the promise to 'obey' when he came to put the questions to her, and also upon the words 'obedient wife.' Wherefore I have ever held him to be a man gifted above most with the second sight.

It was between the sweet hazel and the flowering May that we rode south—we two alone. For Robert Harburgh had led a company of men with flower-wreathed lances and of young maids on palfreys as far as the crossing of the roads which come from Culzean, where there met us a party with the loving cup.

But now at long and last we were won clear, and ever as we rode we caught hands and laughed and loosed them again—all for gladness to be alone. And we looked in one another's eyes, and nigh brought ourselves and our horses to destruction by thus looking and overlooking. Till I felt mine old Dom Nicholas, a horse that loves not philandering, grow restive and sulky under my thigh, tossing his head up as one slighted for the unworthy. And ever as we went she charged it upon me that then and then, and at such another time, I loved her not. And ever I swore that I did. Thereafter, being beaten on that point, she fell to declaring that she had loved me first and most—but I only reluctantly and, as it had been, at second-hand.

Thus we made the miles and the hours go by, redding up all our past life and planning our future, wondering the while if the stir and clangour of war had indeed passed away for ever. For already there had come a new look upon the land. Whether it was the union of the crowns and the new English wealth which made money more plenty, I know not, at any rate certain it is that there had arrived a security to which we in the lands of Carrick had been strangers for many generations.

Then it was that the farmer began to set his oxen to the plough in teams of a dozen or more, not fearing any longer that there might come a glint of steel-harnessed riders over the hill, who should drive his cattle before them and leave himself lying in the furrow a-welter in his blood.

The wind blew sweet about us. It seemed that never had there been a spring like this one since the world began, never such delicatest airs as those that stirred the crisps about Nell's white neck when she bent it sideways to hearken to my speeches. I declare that were I not an unlearned Scot, who takes to his pen only when work for the sword waxes slack, I could praise my love in similitudes of Arabian birds and ferny sprays, as well as Euphues' Delight or even as in the gentle Sydney his Arcadia.

But as it is I waste time, for already I have spoke too long, and must haste me to the end. Though this is a part of my life that I could love to linger on. For what is pleasanter than sunshine after storm and the bolts of ruin.