COQUETTE'S RELIGION

The Whaup was convinced that he had never seen upon earth, nor yet in his Sunday-morning dreams of what heaven might be like, any creature half so beautiful, and bewitching, and graceful, as the young girl who now walked beside him. Yet he could not tell in what lay her especial charm; for, regarding her with the eye of a critic, the Whaup observed that she was full of defects. Her face was pale and French-looking; and, instead of the rosy bloom of a pretty country lass, there was a tinge of southern sun over her complexion. Then her hair was in obvious disorder—some ragged ends of silky brown, scattered over her forehead in Sir Peter Lely fashion, being surmounted by a piece of yellow silk ribbon; while there were big masses behind that only partially revealed a shapely neck. Then her eyes, though they were dark and expressive, had nothing of the keen and merry look of your bouncing country belle. Nor was there anything majestic in her appearance; although, to be sure, she walked with an ease and grace which gave even to an observer a sense of suppleness and pleasure. Certainly, it was not her voice which had captivated him; for when he at first heard her absurd accent, he had nearly burst out laughing. Notwithstanding all which, when she turned the pale, pretty, foreign face to him, and when she said, with a smile that lit up the dark eyes and showed a glimpse of pearly teeth—"It rains not always in your country, then?"—he remarked no stiffness in her speech, but thought she spoke in music. He could scarcely answer her. He had already succumbed to the spell of the soft eyes and the winning voice that had earned for this young lady, when she was but four years of age, the unfair name of Coquette.

"Do you know Lord Earlshope?" he said, abruptly.

She turned to him with a brief glance of surprise. It seemed to him that every alteration in her manner and every new position of her figure—was an improvement.

"That gentleman who did come with us? No; I do not know him."

"You were talking to him as if you did know him very well," said the Whaup, sternly. He was beginning to suspect this cousin of his of being a deceitful young person.

"I had great pleasure of speaking to him. He speaks French—he is very agreeable."

"Look here," said the Whaup, with a sudden knitting his brow, "I won't have you talk to Earlshope, if you live in this house. Now, mind!"

"What!" she cried, with a look of amused wonder, "I do think you are jealous of me already. You will make me—what is it called? vaniteuse. Is it not a lark!"

She smiled as she locked at her new cousin. The Whaup began to recall German legends of the devil appearing in the shape of a beautiful woman.

"Ladies in this country don't use expressions like that," said he; adding scornfully, "If that is a French custom, you'd better forget it."

"Is it not right to say 'a lark?'" she asked, gravely. "Papa used to say that, and mamma and I got much of our English from him. I will not say it again, if you wish."

"Did you call it English?" said the Whaup, with some contempt.

At this moment the Minister came out from the door of the Manse, and approached his niece. She ran to him, took both his hands in hers, and then suddenly, and somewhat to his discomfiture, kissed him; while in the excitement of the moment she forgot to speak her broken English, and showered upon him a series of pretty phrases and questions in French.

"Dear me!" he observed, in a bewildered way.

"She is a witch," said the Whaup to himself, standing by, and observing with an angry satisfaction that this incomprehensible foreigner, no matter what she did or said, was momentarily growing more graceful. The charm of her appearance increased with every new look of her face, with every new gesture of her head. And when she suddenly seemed to perceive that her uncle had not understood a word of her tirade—and when, with a laugh and a blush, she threw out her pretty hands in a dramatic way, and gave ever so slight a shrug with her small shoulders—the picture of her confusion and embarrassment was perfect.

"Oh, she is an actress—I hate actresses!" said the Whaup.

Meanwhile his cousin recovered herself and began to translate into stiff and curious English (watching her pronunciation carefully) the rapid French she had been pouring out. But her uncle interrupted her, and said—

"Come into the house first, my bairn, and we will have the story of your journey afterwards. Dear me, I began to think ye could speak nothing but that unintelligible Babel o' a tongue."

So he led her into the house, the Whaup following; and Catherine Cassilis, whom they had been taught by letter to call Coquette, looked round upon her new home.

She was the only daughter of the Minister's only brother, a young man who had left Scotland in his teens, and never returned. He had been such another as the Whaup in his youth, only that his outrages upon the decorum of his native village had been of a somewhat more serious kind. His family were very glad when he went abroad; and when they did subsequently hear of him they heard no good. Indeed, a very moderate amount of wildishness became something terrible when rumoured through the quiet of Airlie; and the younger Cassilis was looked on as the prodigal son, whom no one was anxious to see again. At length the news came that he had married some foreign woman—and this put a climax to his wickedness. It is true that the captain of a Greenock ship, having been at St. Nazaire, had there met Mr. Cassilis, who had taken his countryman home to his house, some few miles further along the banks of the Loire. The captain carried to Greenock, and to Airlie, the news that the Minister's brother was the most fortunate of men. The French lady he had married was of the most gracious temperament, and had the sweetest looks. She had brought her husband a fine estate on the Loire, where he lived like a foreign prince, not like the brother of a parish minister. They had a daughter—an elf, a fairy, with dark eyes and witching ways—who lisped French with the greatest ease in the world. Old Gavin Cassilis, the Minister, heard, and was secretly rejoiced. He corresponded, in his grave and formal fashion, with his brother; but he would not undertake a voyage to a country that had abandoned itself to infidelity. The Minister knew no France but the France of the Revolution time; and so powerfully had he been impressed in his youth by the stories of the worship of the Goddess of Reason, that, while the ancient languages were as familiar to him as his own, while he knew enough of Italian to read the Inferno, and had mastered oven the technicalities of the German theologians, nothing would ever induce him to study French. It was a language abhorred—it had lent itself to the most monstrous apostacy of recent times.

The mother and father of Coquette died within a few hours of each other, cut off by a fever which was raging over the south of France; and the girl, according to their wish, was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, where she remained until she was eighteen. She was then transferred to the care of her only living relative—Mr. Gavin Cassilis, the parish Minister of Airlie. She had never seen anything of Scotland or of her Scotch relations. The life that awaited her was quite unknown to her. She had no dread of the possible consequences of removing her thoroughly southern nature into the chiller social atmosphere of the north. So far, indeed, her journey had been a pleasant one; and she saw nothing to make her apprehensive of the future. She had been met at the railway station by the Minister's man, Andrew; but she had no opportunity of noticing his more than gloomy temperament, or the scant civility he was inclined to bestow on a foreign jade who was dressed so that all the men turned and looked at her as though she had been a snare of Satan. For they had scarcely left the station, and were making their way upward to the higher country, when they overtook Lord Earlshope, who was riding leisurely along. Andrew—much as he contemned the young nobleman, who had not the best of reputations in the district—touched his cap, as in duty bound. His lordship glanced with a look of surprise and involuntary admiration at the young lady who sat on the dog-cart; and then rode forward, and said—

"May I have the pleasure of introducing myself to Mr. Cassilis' niece? I hope I am not mistaken."

With a frankness which appalled Andrew—who considered this boldness on the part of an unmarried woman to be indicative of the licentiousness of French manners—the young lady replied; and in a few minutes Lord Earlshope had succeeded in drawing her into a pleasant conversation in her own tongue. Nay, when they had reached Earlshope, he insisted that Miss Cassilis should enter the gate and drive through the park, which ran parallel with the road. He himself was forced to leave his horse with the lodge-keeper, the animal having mysteriously become lame on ascending the hill; but, with a careless apology and a laugh, the fair-haired young gentleman jumped on to the dog-cart behind, and begged Andrew for a "lift" as far as the Manse.

Andrew thought it was none of his business. Had his companion been an ordinarily sober and discreet young woman, he would not have allowed her to talk so familiarly with this graceless young lord; but, said the Minister's man to himself, they were well met.

"They jabbered away in their foreign lingo," said Andrew, that evening, to his wife Leezibeth, the house-keeper, "and I'm thinking it was siccah a language was talked in Sodom and Gomorrah. And he was a' smiles, and she was a' smiles; and they seemed to think nae shame o' themselves, goin' through a decent country-side. It's a dispensation, Leezibeth; that's what it is—a dispensation—this hussy coming amang us wi' her French silks and her satins, and her deevlish license o' talkin' like a play-actor."

"Andrew, my man," said Leezibeth, with a touch of spite (for she had become rather a partisan of the stranger), "she'll no be the only lang tongue we hae in the parish. And what ails ye at her talking, if ye dinna understand it? As for her silks and her satins, the Queen on the throne couldna set them off better."

"Didna I tell ye!" said Andrew, eagerly, "the carnal eye is attracted already. She has cast her wiles owre ye, Leezibeth. It's a temptation."

"Will the body be quiet!" said Leezibeth, with rising anger. "He's fair out o' his wits to think that a woman come to my time o' life should be thinking o' silks and satins for mysel'. 'Deed, Andrew, there's no much fear o' my spending siller on finery, when ye never see a bawbee without running for an auld stocking to hide it in!"

Oddly enough, Andrew was at first the only one of them who apprehended any evil from the arrival of the young girl who had come to pass her life among people very dissimilar from herself. The simplicity and frankness of her manner towards Lord Earlshope he exaggerated into nothing short of license; and his "dour" imagination had already perceived in her some strange resemblance to the Scarlet Woman, the Mother of Abominations, who sat on the seven hills and mocked at the saints. Andrew was a morbid and morose man, of Seceder descent; and he had inherited a tinge of the old Cameronian feeling, not often met with now-a-days. He felt it incumbent on him to be a sort of living protest in the Manse against the temporising and feeble condition of theological opinion he found there. He looked upon Mr. Cassilis as little else than a "Moderate;" and even made bold, upon rare occasions, to confront the Minister himself.

"Andrew," said Mr. Cassilis one day, "you are a rebellious servant, and one that would intemperately disturb the peace o' the Church."

"In nowise, Minister, in nowise," retorted Andrew, with firmness. "But in maitters spiritual I will yield obedience to no man. There is but one King in Sion, sir, for a' that a dominant and Erastian Estayblishment may say."

"Toots, toots," said the Minister, testily. "Let the Establishment alone, Andrew. It does more good than harm, surely."

"Maybe, maybe," replied Andrew (with an uncomfortable feeling that the Establishment had supplied him with the carnal advantages of a good situation), "but I am not wan that would rub out the ancient landmarks o' the faith which our fathers suffered for, and starved for, and bled for. The auld religion is dying out owre fast as it is, but there is still a remnant o' Jacob among the Gentiles, and they are not a' like Nicodemus, that was ashamed o' the truth that was in him, and bided until the nicht."

It was well, therefore, that this fearless denouncer did not hear the following conversation which took place between the Minister and his niece. The latter had been conducted by Leezibeth to see the rooms prepared for her. With these she was highly delighted. A large chamber, which had served as a dormitory for the boys, was now transformed into a sitting-room for her, and the boys' beds had been carried into a neighbouring hayloft, which had been cleared out for the purpose. In this sitting-room she found her piano, which had been sent on some days before, and a number of other treasures from her southern home. There were two small square windows in the room; and they looked down upon the garden, with its moss-grown wall, and, beyond that, over a corner of Airlie moor, and, beyond that again, towards the sloping and wooded country which stretched away to the western coast. A faint grey breadth of sea was visible there; and the island of Arran, with its peaked mountains grown a pale, transparent blue, lay along the horizon.

"Ye might hae left that music-box in France," said Leezibeth. "It's better fitted for there than here."

"I could not live without it," said Coquette, with a quiet smile.

"Then I'd advise ye no to open it the-day, which is a day o' preparation for the solemn services o' the Sabbath. The denner is on the table, miss."

The young lady went down-stairs and took her place at the table, all the boys staring at her with open mouth and eyes. It was during her talk with the Minister that she casually made a remark about "the last time she had gone to mass."

Consternation sat upon every face. Even the Minister looked shocked, and asked her if she had been brought up a Roman.

"A Catholic? Yes," said Coquette, simply, and yet looking strangely at the faces of the boys. They had never before had a Catholic come among them unawares.

"I am deeply grieved and pained," said the Minister, gravely. "I knew not that my brother had been a pervert from the communion of our Church——"

"Papa was not a Catholic," said Coquette. "Mamma and I were. But it matters nothing. I will go to your church—it is the same to me."

"But," said the Minister, in amazement and horror, "it is worse that you should be so indifferent than that you should be a Catholic. Have you never been instructed as to the all-importance of your religious faith?"

"I do not know much—but I will learn, if you please," she said. "I have only tried to be kind to the people around me—that is all. I will learn if you will teach me. I will be what you like."

"Her ignorance is lamentable," muttered the Minister to himself; and the boys looked at her askance and with fear. Perhaps she was a secret friend and ally of the Pope himself.

But the Whaup, who had been inclined to show an independent contempt for his new cousin, no sooner saw her get into trouble, than he startled everybody by exclaiming, warmly—

"She has got the best part of all religions, if she does her best to the people round about her."

"Thomas," said the Minister, severely, "you are not competent to judge of these things."

But Coquette looked at the lad, and saw that his face was burning; and she thanked him with her expressive eyes. Another such glance would have made the Whaup forswear his belief in the Gunpowder Plot; and as it was, he began to cherish wild notions about Roman Catholicism. That was the first result of Coquette's arrival at Airlie.