Lochinvar: A Novel
by S. R. Crockett · English · Gutenberg #45495 · 708,545 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Lochinvar: A Novel
Author: S. R. Crockett
Illustrator: Thure de Thulstrup
Release date: April 26, 2014 [eBook #45495]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOCHINVAR: A NOVEL ***
[Illustration:
[Page 306
"WAT'S HAND MOSTLY ON HIS SWEETHEART'S SHOULDER"]
LOCHINVAR
A Novel
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
AUTHOR OF "THE GRAY MAN" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
BY T. DE THULSTRUP
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1898
BY S. R. CROCKETT.
THE GRAY MAN. A Novel. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth,
Ornamental, $1 50.
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
NEW YORK AND LONDON.
Copyright, 1897, BY HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD TO THE TALE 1
I. FROM LIKING TO LOVE 18
II. WHY KATE HATED LOCHINVAR 29
III. THE BULL, THE CALF, AND THE KILLER 38
IV. THE DUEL AT THE INN OF BREDERODE 46
V. HAXO THE BULL INTERFERES 58
VI. THE PRINCE OF ORANGE 68
VII. MISTRESS MAISIE LENNOX, DIPLOMATIST 74
VIII. THE STREET OF THE BUTCHERY 83
IX. MY LORD OF BARRA 90
X. THE DESCENT OF AVERNUS 100
XI. THE HEARTS OF WOMEN 114
XII. THE PRISON OF AMERSFORT 120
XIII. MY LORD OF BARRA'S VOW 126
XIV. MAISIE'S NIGHT QUEST 133
XV. A NIGHT OF STORM 140
XVI. THE BREAKING OF THE PRISON 146
XVII. JACK SCARLETT CALLS HIMSELF A FOOL 155
XVIII. A PERILOUS MEETING 164
XIX. THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES 172
XX. CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN 179
XXI. THE GOOD SHIP _SEA UNICORN_ 187
XXII. WISE JAN PETTIGREW 192
XXIII. WISE JAN WAXES WISER 200
XXIV. MADCAP MEHITABEL 206
XXV. TRUE LOVE AND PIGNUTS 212
XXVI. A BOAT IN SIGHT AT SULISCANNA 219
XXVII. THE TIDE-RACE OF SULISCANNA 223
XXVIII. JOHN SCARLETT COMES ASHORE 230
XXIX. WAT'S ISLE OF REFUGE 236
XXX. WAT SWIMS THE WATER CAVERN 243
XXXI. BESS LANDSBOROUGH'S CATECHISM 249
XXXII. THE SURRENDER OF THE BELOVED 256
XXXIII. AN ANCIENT LOVE AFFAIR 262
XXXIV. CAPTOR AND CAPTIVE 270
XXXV. SKIRTING THE BREAKERS 279
XXXVI. PASSAGE PERILOUS 286
XXXVII. THE ISLE OF BLISS 292
XXXVIII. MISFORTUNATE COLIN 302
XXXIX. SATAN SPIES OUT PARADISE 311
XL. SERPENT'S EGGS 318
XLI. LOVE THAT THINKETH NO EVIL 324
XLII. THE FIERY CROSS 331
XLIII. COLL O' THE COWS 336
XLIV. GREAT DUNDEE 343
XLV. KILLIEKRANKIE 350
XLVI. THE LEAGUER OF DUNKELD 359
XLVII. THE GOLDEN HEART 365
XLVIII. THE MASTER COMES HOME 373
XLIX. THE CURATE OF DALRY 380
L. LOCHINVAR KEEPS TRYST 386
LI. THE BRIDE'S LOVING-CUP 391
LII. CATCH THEM WHO CAN! 397
LIII. WITHIN THE KING'S MERCY 402
EPILOGUE OF SUPEREROGATION 408
ILLUSTRATIONS
"WAT'S HAND MOSTLY ON HIS SWEETHEART'S SHOULDER" _Frontispiece_
_Facing p._
"'I WILL TAKE MY OWN LOVE-TOKEN'" 32
"SCARLETT THUNDERED ON THE PANELS WITH THE HILT OF HIS SWORD" 64
"THE GENTLEMAN INSTANTLY ATTACKED THEM FURIOUSLY" 90
"THE MAN CARRIED HER EASILY THROUGH THE SURF" 144
"A COUPLE OF PISTOL-SHOTS RANG OUT LOUDLY" 176
"THE SELF-SATISFACTION FLICKERED OUT OF HIS FACE" 204
"THEN THE SWIRLING TIDE-RACE TOOK HOLD OF HER" 226
"A GIGANTIC HIGHLANDER WITH A NAKED CLAYMORE BY HIS SIDE" 250
"WAT PUSHED OFF IN THE SMALLER BOAT" 284
"STRIDING FORWARD FRANKLY AND GIVING A HAND TO EACH" 338
"HE FELL INWARD AMONG THE WOUNDED" 362
"WITH HIS LOVE BETWEEN HIS ARMS" 398
LOCHINVAR
FOREWORD TO THE TALE, TELLING WHAT BEFELL AT THE HOUSE OF BALMAGHIE
IN THE YEAR OF GRACE 1685, AND HOW MY LADY WELLWOOD PARTED TWO
YOUNG LOVERS
"Aye," said Mistress Crombie, house-keeper to Roger McGhie,
Laird of Balmaghie, a considerable house in the south-lying and
better-cultivated part of the wild lands of Galloway--"aye, indeed, ye
may well say it, Alisoun Begbie. It is a wondrous and most ungentle
thing when the doe seeks the hart--panting and brayin' for a man, as
the Guid Buik says. And saw ye ever sic feathers?--I declare they
nearly soopit the floor. My Lady Wellwood, or no my Lady Wellwood, I
trow she didna come ridin' by the hoose o' Balmaghie only to ask the
time o' day, upsetting besom that she is!"
During this harangue Alisoun Begbie was clattering about among her
bottles and dishes in the stone-flagged, slate-shelved still-room
which constituted her pantry. A few minutes before she had cried
mischievously out of the window to Lang Wat, the new under-gardener of
Balmaghie, to the effect that "siccan a guid-lookin' chiel should be
seen oftener about the house--but that she, Alisoun Begbie, was not
wanting anything to do with the likes of him. She could get plenty
of lads, and it was weel-kenned that the Glenkens' folk aye took up
wi' their ain folk at ony rate." But as soon as the "bauchles"[A]
of Mistress Crombie, the shrill-tempered house-keeper, were heard
scuffling up the stairs, Alisoun made a pretty warning face of
silence at Lang Wat, and tossed her head to intimate that some one
approached from behind; so that, without making any verbal answer,
the under-gardener resumed his occupation of the moment, which was
the pruning and grafting of sundry rose-bushes--the pride and care of
Mistress Kate McGhie, the "young leddy" of the great house of Balmaghie.
[A] Certain heelless and shapeless slippers, characteristic
of the district.
"Na, 'deed, Alisoun Begbie," cried Mistress Crombie once more, from
the cheek of the door, "believe me when I tell ye that sic a braw city
madam--and a widow forbye--doesna bide about an auld disjaskit rickle
o' stanes like the Hoose o' the Grenoch withoot haeing mair in her head
than just sending warnings to Clavers aboot the puir muirland folk,
that keep their misguided conventicles up ayont there, and pray a'
nicht in the lirks o' the hills and the black hags o' the peat-mosses."
"Aye, ye may say so, 'deed, mistress," agreed Alisoun, keeping an eye
upon the window of her pantry, through which she could see Lang Wat
bending his back among the rose-bushes. Spite of his good looks, he
had proved himself a singularly flinty-hearted fellow-servitor, and
ill to set to the wooing. But Alisoun had still hopes of him. She had
succeeded with some difficult--indeed, almost hopeless--cases in her
time, and the very unresponsive nature of the young Glenkens' gardener
stirred her ambition to brighter and more inviting glances, as well as
to gayer and ever daintier ribbons.
But in spite of both loving looks and lovers' knots, Lang Wat neither
succumbed nor yet appeared so much as conscious of her regard. Truly a
marvellous young man--such as had never come within the sphere of the
comely handmaiden's influence before.
"Weel, I'se warrant my lady needna set her cap at our maister," said
Alisoun Begbie, willing to agree with the powerful and cantankerous
house-keeper: "Na, Roger McGhie o' Balmaghie has his wits aboot him.
Surely it is a terrible thing when a woman so far forgets hersel' as to
set her cap for a man."
And pretty Alisoun glanced at the silver salver she was polishing, in
order to be sure that her silken snood was in its proper place, and
that the braids of her hair were drawn back smoothly and daintily from
her brow. Being reassured on these points, she resumed the salver with
renewed complaisance. Lang Wat was now standing meditatively outside,
quite near the house, and with his face turned towards her window. He
was leaning upon his spade; any moment he might look up. Pretty Alisoun
Begbie breathed upon the silver with a certain seductive pouting of her
lips, rubbed the place clear, breathed again upon it, and last of all
frowned alluringly at it--for the very excellent reason that one of her
former admirers had incautiously told her that such frowning became her
mightily. But in spite of all, Lang Wat remained rapt in abstractest
meditation. At which Alisoun Begbie tossed her head and frowned
again--not this time for picturesque reasons, but in good earnest.
"He micht at least have kissed his hand, the silly cuif!" she said,
half to herself, looking resentfully at the impervious under-gardener
of Balmaghie.
"What!" cried Mistress Crombie, "kissed his hand, indeed, ye
daft-speaking, licht-headed hizzie! I hope that my maister has
something else to do than to gang kissin' his hand to a' the
high-flyin' madams that likes to come aboot the hoose--wi' their auld
guidmen hardly cauld in their coffins, and as much paint on their
impudent faces as wad serve for the body o' a trail cart. Kiss his
hand to her, indeed! Na, na, set her up; a deal less than that will
serve her."
A stir was heard at the top of the stairs which led up from the
still-room, among the cool recesses of which this conversation had been
proceeding between Mistress Crombie and her favorite assistant.
"Dear sirs, that's the maister himsel', I declare," said the
house-keeper, looking cautiously up, "and dressed in his Sunday
breeks--mercy on us!--and his best coat wi' the new lace on the
collar, and the cuffs that I laid aside for the next burial or siclike
festivity. But--Lord preserve us!--here on a Wednesday he maun gang and
put them on! The man's surely gane clean mad. He shall sup sorrow like
sowens for this yet, and that will be seen."
"Maybe he has been kissin' mair than his ain hand," said Alisoun
Begbie, slyly. She was still smarting from her rebuke by the
house-keeper; besides which, Lang Wat would not look up.
Mistress Crombie started as if she had been stung.
"Save us!" she cried, "do ye think so? Then a' our good days aboot
the hoose o' the Balmaghie are numbered! Oh, the bonny place, where
I thocht to end my days wi' a guid maister and a kindly! Oh, women,
women--what hae ye no to answer for, upsettin' a' plans, stirrin' up a'
ill, pu'in' doon a' guid! Eh, Alisoun, but what a paradise the world
wad be wi' only men in it, and no a woman frae end to end o't--_forbye
mysel'_--whatna Gairden o' Eden wad that no make!"
But the eyes of Alisoun Begbie were fastened on a certain shaded
nook among the rose-bushes, wherein a pretty enough comedy was being
enacted; though, be it said, one little to the taste of the still-room
maid. Mistress Crombie, had she been observant, might have discovered
abundant cause to find fault with her maid's diligence and attention
to the details of her duty during the next half-hour. But luckily for
Alisoun Begbie, that good though suspicious lady had betaken herself
indignantly up-stairs. There, with haughty head tossing in the air and
a certain ominously aggrieved silence, she proceeded to meditate upon
the other details of her master's attire--his Sunday shoes with silver
buckles, his ribbons of pale blue at the knee, and especially the grand
new wig of the latest court fashion, which Colonel John Graham of
Claverhouse had brought all the way in his saddle-bag from Robin Rae's,
the periwig-maker in the Lawnmarket, the last time he rode to Edinburgh
to consult with the Lords of the Privy Council.
Now, what Alisoun Begbie watched behind the rosebushes was this:
She saw the under-gardener, "Lang Wat o' the Glenkens," as he was
called about the house, in close and kindly converse with Mistress Kate
McGhie, the only daughter of the house and heiress of her father's
wide estates. She had come, a tall and graceful maid attired in white,
lightfoot down a shady garden-path, the sunshine and the leaves
together flecking her white dress with wavering shadows, her dark,
shapely head thrown a little back, her chin tilted somewhat defiantly
in the air, and her broad summer hat a-swing in her left hand. Fitfully
she hummed a tune, but whenever she forgot the words (which was very
often) the song dropped, and, without the least break of continuity,
proceeded on its way as a whistle. And in either case the sounds
proceeded, so thought the under-gardener, from the prettiest and most
appetizing mouth in the world.
Indeed, as soon as Mistress Kate came within hearing distance of him,
Lang Wat promptly swept his broad bonnet from his head in salute, and
told her so. Which, when one thinks of it, was a considerable liberty
for an under-gardener to take.
But the lady received the compliment not amiss, being to all
appearance neither elated nor astonished. Was she not Kate McGhie of
Balmaghie, and had she not been accustomed to be told that she was
beautiful as long as she could remember? Consistent and continuous
admiration had become familiar to her as the air she breathed, and had
done her as little harm. It seemed to Kate as natural that she should
be assured that she was winsome as to be told that she had a good
appetite. And the information affected her equally in either case.
Since her very tenderest years there had been but one dissentient voice
in this chorus of universal love and admiration--a certain small boy
from the Glenkens, a laird's son, one Walter Gordon of Lochinvar, who
had come to the house of Balmaghie on a visit with his father, and had
enshrined his dissent in a somewhat memorable form.
For, by the common bruit of the country-side, the girl had been
denominated--while yet but a child with great hazel eyes that promised
dangerous things, and a tossing fleece of curls--the Pride of
Balmaghie. And the maid herself, when asked her name, was accustomed to
reply frankly:
"I is little Kate McGhie--
What everybody loves."
But this same Gordon lad from the Glenkens, scornful in the pride of
half a dozen years of superior age, never heard the phrase without
adding his own contemptuous disclaimer, "Little brute, _I_ don't love
her."
Nevertheless, the time came when the scorner recanted his renunciation.
And that time was now, under the garden trees of the house of Balmaghie
and the jealous eyes of Alisoun Begbie. For "Lang Wat o' the Glenkens,"
under-gardener to Roger McGhie of Balmaghie, was none other than Walter
Gordon, the young laird of Lochinvar, fallen into ill-odor with the
King's government--both in the matter of the wounding of my Lord of
Wellwood, and as being suspected of companying and intercommuning with
the wild Whigs of the hills. For the times bore hard on all such as
were of doubtful loyalty, and fines and confiscations were the least
those had to expect who refused to side openly with the blusterous
riders and galloping compellers of the King's forces. The blaze of
muskets in face of a stone wall, the ever-busy rope in the Grassmarket
of Edinburgh (where during two brisk years of the "Killing Time" the
hangman needed a new "tow" every month from the Town Council, and
the pay of an additional assistant whenever "he was overthrong with
the hanging of so many Westland men")--these and other symptoms of
troublous times sent many well-disposed and innocent folk into hiding.
But it was not alone the superior advantages of Balmaghie as a
hiding-place which had brought Wat Gordon of Lochinvar thither
in search of shelter. It might rather be the sweeping, darksome
under-curve of Kate McGhie's eyelashes, and the little specks of light
which swam and sparkled in the depths of her hazel eyes, like the
shredded gold in that rare liqueur which John Scarlett, the famous
master-at-arms, had brought back with him last year from Dantzig.
Not that Wat Gordon was very deeply or seriously in love. He dallied
and daintied with it rather. True--he thought about love and the making
of it night and day, and (for the time being) his ideal and liege lady
was the young mistress of the house of Balmaghie.
And Kate McGhie, knowing him for what he was, and being (unlike her
father, but like most of the women-folk of Scotland) a sympathizer
with the oppressed of the Covenant, showed no small kindness to the
under-gardener.
She was a maiden left much alone. She was at the age when love is still
an insubstantial, rosy dream, yet few youths of her own quality were
ever encouraged to come about her father's house. So that her pity and
her admiration were the more easily engaged on behalf of the handsome
and unfortunate young laird who told her at least ten times a day (when
he had the chance) that he was as willing as any Jacob to serve seven
years, and seven to the back of that, in the hope of such a Rachel. For
even before he began to do more than play with true love, Wat Gordon
had a gift of love-making which might have wiled a bird off a tree.
Yet, for all that, when he came to practise on Kate McGhie, he wiled
in vain. For the girl was buttressed and defended by a lifetime of
admiration from all who came about her--by her father's adoration, the
devotion of every man, woman, and child about the house of Balmaghie,
and, above all, by the repute of reigning beauty athwart all the
country-side. So, though she might think well enough of Wat Gordon,
that handsome exile from his heritages and lordships now in picturesque
hiding as her father's under-gardener, she was (so at least she told
herself) in no danger of permitting that liking to develop into any
feeling more dangerous or more exacting.
So these two fenced, each of them in their own way, right gallantly
with lightsome love; while the love that is not lightsome, but strong
as death, smiled out upon them from behind the rose-bushes, and lay in
wait for one and the other.
Presently, while they were yet talking and Alisoun Begbie still
carefully observant of them, the front door of the house of Balmaghie
opened wide, and the laird himself came down the steps looking a little
dashed and shamefaced, for Mistress Crombie had ushered him to the door
with ironic state and ceremony.
"Dootless your honor is on his way to pay duty to the King's
Commissioner at Kirkcudbright," she said, with pointed sarcasm which
the shy laird did not know well how to parry. "But ye hae forgotten
your pearl studs in your sark, and the wee hangie-swordie o' the court
that will no draw oot o' its scabbard, nor so muckle as hurt a flea."
"I thank you, mistress," said Roger, not daring to look at his too
faithful domestic, "but I go not so far afield as to see His Majesty's
Commissioner. 'Tis but the matter of a visitor whom we must expect this
forenoon. See that some collation is prepared for her."
"_Her!_" ejaculated Mistress Crombie, with an indescribable accent of
surprise, not unmingled with scorn. "_Her_--we are to hae the company
o' a great lady, nae doot. And this the first that your humble servant
and house-keeper has heard o' the matter! 'Collation,' quo' he? Whatna
dinner do ye think can be got ready between eleven and twa o' the clock
on a Wednesday, wi' a' the lasses at the washin' except Alisoun Begbie,
and nocht in the larder forbye twa pookit chuckie-hens, that came frae
the Boat Craft less than half an hour since?"
"But, surely, these will do very well," said Roger McGhie, with
increasing nervousness. "'Tis only my Lady of Wellwood, who rides over
from the Grenoch."
For in truth he had been afraid to mention the matter to Mistress
Crombie, and so had put off till it was too late--as the manner of men
is.
"I forgot to acquaint you with the fact before; it--ah--it altogether
escaped my memory," said he, beginning to pull his gloves on as he
descended the steps.
"But ye didna forget to put on your Sunday claes, Laird Balmaghie,"
cried the privileged domestic after him, sarcastically; "nor did your
best silken hose nor your silver buckles escape your memory! And ye
minded brawly to scent your ruffles wi' cinnamon and rosemary. Ye dinna
forget ony o' thae things--that were important, and maitters o' life
and death, as one might say. It only escaped your memory to tell your
puir feckless auld house-keeper to mak' ony provision for your dainty
dames and court leddies. Ou aye, it maitters little for the like o'
her--Marion Crombie, that has only served ye for forty year, and never
wranged ye o' a fardin's-worth. Dinna waste a thought on her, puir auld
woman, though she should die in a hedge-root, so long as ye can hae a
great repair o' powdered weemen and galloping frisk-me-denties to come
ridin' aboot your hoose."
But whatever else Mistress Crombie might have had to say to her master
was lost in the clatter of hoofs and the stir and bustle of a new
arrival.
Up the avenue came a bold horsewoman riding a spirited bay, reining
it like a man as she stayed her course on the river gravel before the
front door and sent the stones spraying from its fore-feet at the halt.
The new-comer wore a plumed hat and the riding-dress of red, which,
together with her warm sympathies with the "persecutors," caused my
Lady Wellwood to be known in the country-side as "The Scarlet Woman."
She was a handsome dame of forty, or mayhap a little more; but, save
for the more pronounced arching of her haughty nose and the rounding
curves of her figure, she might well have passed for ten or twelve
years younger.
The Laird of Balmaghie went eagerly forward to meet his visitor. He
took gratefully enough the hand which she reached to him a little
indulgently, as one might give a sweetmeat to a child to occupy its
attention. For even as he murmured his welcomes the lady's eyes
were certainly not upon her host, but on the erect figure of his
under-gardener, who stood staring and transfixed by the rose-bush which
he had been pruning.
"My Lady Wellwood," said Roger McGhie, "this is indeed an honor and a
privilege."
"Who may this youth be?" interrupted the lady, imperiously cutting
short his sober courtesies and pointing to Lang Wat of the Glenkens.
"It is but one of my gardeners; he has lately come about the house,"
answered Roger McGhie, "a well-doing carle enough and a good worker.
But hark ye, my lady, perhaps a wee overfond of Whiggery and such
strait-lacedness, and so it may be as well to give his name the go-by
when John Graham comes this way."
My Lady of Wellwood never took her eyes off the gardener's face.
"Come hither and help me to dismount," she said, beckoning with her
finger.
Wat Gordon went reluctantly enough, dragging one foot after the
other. He realized that the end had come to his residence among the
flower-closes of Balmaghie, and that he must e'en bid farewell to
these walks and glades as of Paradise, upon which, as upon his life,
the hazel eyes of Kate McGhie had lately rained such sweet influences.
Meanwhile the laird stood meekly by. The caprices of great court-ladies
were not in his province, but, having set out to humor them, he was not
to be offended by the favor shown his servitor. He had heard of such
things at Whitehall, and the memory rather kindled him than otherwise.
He felt all the new life and energy which comes of being transported
into a new world of new customs, new ideas, and even of new laxities.
Wat gave my Lady Wellwood his hand in the courtliest manner. The habit
and gait of the under-gardener seemed to fall from him in a moment at
the sound of that voice, low and languorous, with a thrill in it of
former days which it irked him to think had still power to affect him.
"You have not quite forgotten me, then, sweet lad of Lochinvar?" asked
the Duchess of Wellwood softly in his ear. For so in the days of his
sometime madness she had been wont to call him.
"No," answered Wat, sullenly enough, as he lifted her to the ground,
not knowing what else to say.
"Then meet me at the head of the wood on my way home," whispered the
lady, as she disengaged herself from his arm, and turned with a smiling
face to Roger McGhie.
"And this is your sweet daughter," she murmured, caressingly, to Kate,
who stood by with drooping eyelids, but who, nevertheless, had lost no
shade of the colloquy between Wat Gordon and her father's guest.
The Lady Wellwood took the girl's hand, which lay cold and unresponsive
in her plump white fingers. "A pretty maid--you will be a beauty one
day, my dear," she added, with the condescension of one who knows she
has as yet nothing to fear from younger rivals.
To this Kate answered nothing. For her flatterer was a woman. Had
the Duchess of Wellwood been a man and condescended to this sort of
left-handed praise, Kate would have flashed her eyes and said, "I have
not seldom been told that I am one already." Whereupon he would have
amended his sentence. As it was, Kate said nothing, but only hardened
her heart and wondered what the great court lady had found to whisper
to the man who, during these last months, had daily been avowing
himself her lover. And though Kate was conscious that her heart sat
secure and untouched on its virgin throne, it had, nevertheless, been
not unpleasant to listen to the lad. For of a surety Wat Gordon told
his tale wondrously well.
Roger McGhie conducted the lady gallantly through the garden walks
towards the house. But she had not gone far when she professed herself
overcome by the heat, and desired to be permitted to sit down on a
rustic seat. She was faint, she said; yet, even as she said it, the
keen eye of Kate McGhie noted that her color remained warm and high.
"A tass of water--nay, no wine," she called after the Laird of
Balmaghie; "I thank you for your courtesy."
And Kate's father hastened away a little stiffly to bring it. She knew
that his Sunday shoes irked him. It served him right, she thought. At
his age he ought to know better--but there remained the more important
matter of the under-gardener.
"Come and sit by me, pretty one," said the Lady Wellwood, cooingly, to
Kate.
The "pretty one" would infinitely rather have set herself down by the
side of an adder sunning itself on a bank than shared the woodland seat
with the bold horsewoman of Grenoch.
"Ah! sly one," she said, "I warrant you knew that your under-gardener
there, that handsome lad, was not the landward man he seemed."
She shook her finger reproachfully at her companion as she spoke.
Kate blushed hotly, and then straightway fell to despising herself
for doing it almost as much as she hated my lady for making her. Lady
Wellwood watched her covertly out of the corner of her eyes. She
cultivated a droop of the left eyelid on purpose.
"I know that he is proscribed, and has a price set on his head," Kate
said, quietly, looking after Wat with great indifference as he went
down the avenue of trees.
"And do you know why?" asked the duchess, somewhat abruptly.
"No," answered Kate, wondering at her tone.
"It was for wounding my late husband within the precincts of Holyrood,"
said Lady Wellwood.
But Kate McGhie's anger was now fully roused, and her answer ran
trippingly off her tongue.
"And was it for that service you spoke so kindly to him just now, and
bade him meet you at the head of the wood as you went home?"
The duchess stared a little, but her well-bred calmness was not ruffled.
"Even so," she said, placidly, "and for the further reason that Walter
Gordon was on his way to see _me_ on the night when it was his ill
fortune to meet with my husband instead."
"I do not believe it," cried the girl, lifting her head and looking
Lady Wellwood straight in the eyes.
"Ask him, then!" answered the duchess, with the calm assurance of forty
answering the chit of half her years. For at first sight my lady had
envied and hated the clear, blushful ivory of the girl's cheek and the
natural luxuriance of her close-tangled curls. And since all the art of
St. James's could not match with these, she was now getting even with
Kate in ways of her own.
The girl did not speak. Her heart only welled within her with
contradiction and indignation.
"Or if you will not do that, sit down half an hour hence and read your
book in the little arbor by the end of the avenue, and you will hear
news. Whether you may like it or not is another question. But, at
all events, you shall not have cause to say again that a Duchess of
Wellwood lied."
Kate rose and walked away without answering a word. She cared no jot
for Wat Gordon, so she told herself. He was nothing to her, save that
she desired his safety and had risked much to give him shelter. Yet
this Duchess of Wellwood--that woman of whom the gross popular tongue
whispered commonly the most terrible things! Had Lochinvar made love to
her? Was he to meet her at the end of the avenue? She could not believe
it. It was, indeed, no matter if he did. What did she care? Go to the
arbor, become an eavesdropper--not for any man alive, least of all
for Wat Gordon! Thank God, she had a tongue in her head, and was not
afraid to ask Wat Gordon, or any living soul, whatever she desired to
know.
But after a little hesitation she went up-stairs to her chamber, and,
denying herself the listening of the ear, she listened with her eyes
instead. For she watched my Lady Wellwood being helped into her saddle
right courteously by her father. She saw her looking down at him the
while with a glance professionally tender--a glance that lingered in
the memory by reason of the quiver of an eyelid and the pressure of a
soft, reluctant hand. And Roger McGhie bowed over her plump fingers as
though he had been bidding farewell to some angelic visitant.
For the first time in her life Kate McGhie despised her father. And,
lo! to hurt her heart yet more, and to convince her of the ultimate
falsity of all men, there was Wat, his tall figure overtopping the
hawthorn hedge, walking briskly in the direction of the pinewood at the
end of the avenue.
Kate went down-stairs with a set, still face. She would not cry. She
did not care. She was only bitterly disappointed with the whole race
of mankind, nothing more. They were all no better than so many blind
fools, ready to be taken in by a plausible tongue and a rolling eye. A
fine figure of a woman, and--Lord, where was the best of them?
But her Wat--and with the Duchess of Wellwood; she could not believe
it! Why, she might be his--well, hardly that--but his mother at the
very least.
Not that she cared; she had her work to think about; and Kate McGhie
went down to the little suckling lamb she had fed daily with warm milk
out of a wooden spoon, and which, though now almost of the greatness of
a full-grown sheep, still leaped and fawned upon her. She fetched her
pail and mixed pet Donald's mid-day meal.
Outside the garden wall the lamb was standing, bleating indignant
petitions, and there Katie McGhie fed him with a gradually swelling
heart. As the last drops disappeared into the moist black muzzle, Kate
put her arms about the woolly neck and sobbed aloud.
"Oh, Donald, Donald, my lamb, you are the only friend I have! I do
not love anybody else, and no one in the world loves me. But I am
not sorry--I am glad, and I will not cry. It is not that I love him,
Donald; but, oh! he might not have done it!"
That same evening Wat Gordon, as was his custom, came walking slowly
through the garden pleasaunce. Kate McGhie met him by the rose-bush he
had been pruning that morning.
"Is it true," she asked, looking at him bravely and directly, "that you
are in hiding because, when going to visit the Duchess of Wellwood, you
encountered her husband instead?"
"This much is true," answered Wat, promptly, "that while passing down
the Canongate one snowy night, my cousin, Will Gordon of Earlstoun, and
I were beset by a band of ruffians in the pay of the Duke of Wellwood,
and that in defending ourselves the Duke himself was hurt."
"And when you went out of your lodging that night, was it to walk with
your cousin or to visit my Lady of Wellwood in her boudoir?"
Wat Gordon took his breath hard. The manner of the question left him no
escape with honor. But he could not lie. And he would offer no excuse.
"I went out to visit my Lady Wellwood!" he said, very shortly.
Kate McGhie held out her hand.
"I bid you good-bye," she said; "you will find your ancient friend and
hostess at the Grenoch. There is nothing to detain you any longer about
the poor house of Balmaghie."
And so saying the girl turned on her heel and walked slowly through the
garden garth and past the pruned rose-bushes. She crossed the grassy
slope to the door and there disappeared, leaving Wat Gordon standing
silent, shamed, and amazed.
CHAPTER I
FROM LIKING TO LOVE
It was graying to the edge of dark upon one of the evenings towards
the end of April, in the year 1688, when Walter Gordon, of Lochinvar
in Galloway, and now for some time private in the Prince of Orange's
Douglas regiment of dragoons, strode up the stairs of his cousin Will's
lodging in the ancient Dutch city of Amersfort. The young man had
come straight from duty at the palace, and his humor was not exactly
gracious.
But Wat Gordon could not long remain vexed in spirit in the presence of
his cousin Will's wife, Maisie Lennox. Her still, sweet smile killed
enmity, even as spring sunshine kills the bite of frost. The little,
low-roofed Dutch room, panelled with oak, had its windows open towards
the sun-setting, and there in the glow of the west two girls were
sitting. At sight of them Walter Gordon stopped suddenly in the doorway
as he came bursting in. He had been expecting to see but one--his
cousin's young wife, into whose pretty ear of patientest sympathy
he might pour his fretful boyish disappointments and much-baffled
aspirations.
Mistress Maisie Lennox, now for half a year Will Gordon of Earlstoun's
wife (for by her maiden name she was still used to be called, and so
she signed herself, since it had not yet become the custom for a women
to take among her intimates the style of her husband's surname), sat on
a high-backed chair by the oriel window. She had the kind of sunny hair
which it is a pleasure to look upon, and the ripples of it made crisp
tendrils about her brow. Her face underneath was already sweetening
and gaining in reposefulness, with that look of matronhood which comes
early to patient, gracious women, who would yet venture much for the
man they love. And not once nor yet twice had Maisie Lennox dared all
for those whom she loved--as has, indeed, elsewhere been told.
But, all unexpected of the hasty visitor, there was yet another fair
girl looking up at him there in that quaint, dusky-shadowed room.
Seated upon a low chair, and half leaning across the knees of Mistress
Maisie, set wide apart on purpose, there reclined a maiden of another
temper and mould. Slender and supple she was as willow that sways by
the water-edges, yet returning ever to slim, graceful erectness like a
tempered blade of Damascus; above, the finest and daintiest head in the
world, profiled like Apollo of the Bow, with great eyes that were full
of alternate darkness and tenderness, of tears and fire; a perfectly
chiselled mouth, a thing which is rarer and more excellent than the
utmost beauty of splendid eyes--and sweeter also; a complexion not milk
and rose like that of Maisie Lennox, but of ivory rather, with the
dusky crimson of warm blood blushing up delicately through it. Such was
Kate McGhie, called Kate of the Dark Lashes, the only daughter of Roger
McGhie of Balmaghie, a well-reputed Galloway gentleman in the country
of Scotland.
As Walter Gordon came bursting in his impetuous fashion into his
cousin's room, his sword clashing about his feet and his cavalry spurs
jingling against his boot-heels, he was stopped dead by this most
pleasant sight. Yet all he saw was a girl with her head resting upon
her own clasped hands and reclining on her friend's knee, with her
elbows set wide apart behind her head--while Maisie's hand played, like
a daring swimmer in breaking surf, out and in among the soft crisps
of hair, which were too short to be waves and too long to be curls.
And this hair was of several curious colors, ranging from black in the
shadows through rich brown into dusky gold where the sun's light caught
it lovingly, as though he had already begun to set over the sand-dunes
into the Northern Sea. As Wat stood there, his fingers tingled to
touch. It seemed somehow a squandering of human happiness that only a
girl's hand should smooth that rich tangle and caress those clustering
curls.
Walter Gordon of Lochinvar had flung himself into the little room in
Zandpoort Street, ripe to pour his sorrows into the ear of Maisie
Lennox. Nor was he at all forgetful of the fact that the ear was an
exceedingly pretty one. Most devoutly he hoped that Will, his very
excellent cousin and Maisie's good husband, might have been kept late
at the religious exercises of the Regiment of the Covenant--as that
portion of the Scotch-Dutch auxiliary force was called which had been
mostly officered and recruited from among the more militant exiles and
refugees of the Scottish persecution.
But as Lochinvar came forward somewhat more slowly after his
involuntary start of surprise, his eyes continued to rest on those of
the younger girl, who remained thus reclined on her gossip's lap. She
had not moved at his entrance, but only looked at him very quietly from
under those shadowy curtains which had gained her the name of Kate
of the Dark Lashes. Then in a moment Wat set his hand to his breast
suddenly, as if a bullet had struck him upon the field of battle.
"Kate!" he cried, in a quick, hoarse whisper, as though the word had
been forced from him.
And for a long moment the young soldier stood still and speechless,
with his eyes still fixed upon the girl.
"Walter, mind you not my dearest friend and gossip Kate, and how in
old sad days in the dear far-away land we there underwent many things
together?" asked Maisie Lennox, looking up somewhat doubtfully from
her friend's face into that of Walter Gordon.
"I did not know--I had not heard--" were all the words that the young
squire of dames could find to utter.
"Also there were, if I remember aright," the young matron went on,
with that fatal blundering which sometimes comes to the kindest and
most quick-witted of women, "certain passages between you--of mutual
friendship and esteem, as it might be."
Then, with a single swift movement, lithe and instantaneous as that of
a young wild animal which has never known restraint, Kate of the Dark
Lashes rose to her feet.
"Walter Gordon of Lochinvar," she said, "is a Scottish gentleman. He
will never be willing to remember that which a lady chooses to forget."
But Lochinvar himself, readiest tongue in wit-play as well as keenest
blade when the steel clashed in sterner debate, on this occasion
spake never a word. For in that moment in which he had looked upon
Kate McGhie resting her beautiful head upon her clasped hands in her
friend's lap he had fallen from the safe heights of admiration into the
bottomless abysses of love.
While the pair were still standing thus face to face, and before Kate
sat down again in a more restrained posture on the low-cushioned
window-seat, Will Gordon strode in and set his musket in a corner. He
was habited simply enough in the dark gray of the Hill Folks' regiment,
with the cross of St. Andrew done in blue and white upon his breast.
His wife rose to kiss him as he entered, and then, still holding her by
the hand, he turned to the tall, slim girl by the window.
"Why, Kate, lass, how came the good winds to blow you hither from the
lands of mist over the sea?" he asked.
"Blasts of ill winds in Scotland, well I wot," said Kate McGhie,
smiling at him faintly and holding out her hand.
"Then the ill Scots winds have certainly blown us good here in
Holland," he answered, deftly enough, in the words of the ancient
Scottish proverb.
But the girl went on without giving heed to his kindly compliment.
"The persecution waxes ever hotter and hotter on the hills of the
south," she said, "and what with the new sheriffs, and the raging
of the red-wud Grier of Lag over all our country of Galloway, I saw
that it could not be long before my doings and believings brought
my easy-tempered father into trouble. So, as soon as I knew that, I
mounted me and rode to Newcastle, keeping mostly to the hills, and
avoiding the highways by which the king's soldiers come and go. There,
after some wearisome and dangerous waiting, I got a ship to Rotterdam.
And here I am to sorn upon you!"
She ended with a little gesture of opening her hands and flinging them
from her, which Wat Gordon thought very pretty to behold.
"You are as welcome to our poor soldier's lodging as though it had
been the palace of the stadtholder," answered William Gordon--with,
nevertheless, a somewhat perplexed look, as he thought of another
mouth to be fed upon the scanty and uncertain pay of a private in the
Scottish regiments of the prince.
While his cousin was speaking Wat Gordon had made his way round
the table to the corner of the latticed window farthest from Kate,
where now he stood looking thoughtfully upon the broad canal and the
twinkling lights which were beginning to mark out its banks.
"Why, Wat," cried his cousin Will, clapping him lovingly upon the
shoulder as he went past him to hang up his blue sash on a hook by
the window, "wherefore so sad-visaged, man? This whey face and dour
speechlessness might befit an erewhile Whig gardener of Balmaghie, with
his hod and mattock over his shoulder; but it sets ill with a gay rider
in Douglas's dragoons, and one high in favor in the prince's service."
Lochinvar shook off his cousin's hand a little impatiently. He wanted
nothing better than just to go on watching Kate McGhie's profile as it
outlined itself against the broad, shining reach of water. He marvelled
that he had been aforetime so blind to its beauty; but then these
ancient admirations in Scotland had been only lightness of heart and a
young man's natural love of love-making. But Walter Gordon knew that
this which had stricken him to the heart, as he came suddenly upon the
girl pillowing her head on her palms at Maisie's knee, was no mere
love-making. It was love.
"Who were on duty to-day at headquarters?" Wat asked, gruffly enough.
"Who but Barra and his barbarians of the Isles!" William Gordon made
answer.
Wat stamped his foot boyishly and impatiently.
"The prince shows these dogs overmuch of his favor," he said.
Will Gordon went to the chamber door and opened it. Then he looked back
at his wife.
"Come hither, sweetheart," he said. "It is pay-day, and I must e'en
give thee my wages, ere I be tempted to spend them with fly-by-night
dragoons and riotous night-rakes like our cousin here. Also, I must
consult thee concerning affairs of state--thy housewifery and the price
of candles belike!"
Obediently Maisie rose and followed him out of the room, gliding, as
was her manner, softly through the door like water that runs down a
mill-lade. Kate of the Dark Lashes, on the contrary, moved with the
flash and lightsome unexpectedness of a swallow in flight. Yet now she
sat still enough by the dusky window, looking out upon the twinkling
lights which, as they multiplied, began to be reflected on the waters
of the long, straight canal.
For a while Wat Gordon was content silently to watch the changeful
shapeliness of her head. He had never seen one set at just that angle
upon so charming a neck. He wondered why this girl had so suddenly
grown all wonderful to him. It was strange that hitherto he should have
been so crassly blind. But now he was perfectly content only to watch
and to be silent, so that it was Kate who first felt the necessity for
speech.
"This is a strange new land," she said, thoughtfully, "and it is little
wonder that to-night my heart is heavy, for I am yet a stranger in it."
"Kate," said Wat Gordon, in a low, earnest tone, leaning a little
nearer to her as she sat on the window-seat, "Kate, is there not, then,
all the more reason to remember old friends?"
"And have I not remembered?" answered the girl, swiftly, without
looking at him. "I have come from my father's house straight to Maisie
Lennox--I, a girl, and alone. She is my oldest friend."
"But are there, then, no others?" said the young man, jealously.
"None who have never forgotten, never slighted, never complained, never
faltered in their love, save only my sweet Maisie Lennox," returned the
girl, as she rose from her place and went towards the door, from behind
which came the soft hum of voices in friendly conference.
Wat took two swift steps forward as if to forestall her, but she
slipped past him, light as the shadow of a leaf windblown along the
wall, and laid her hand on the latch.
"Will not you let me be your friend once again after these weary
years?" he asked, eagerly.
The tall girl opened the door and stood a moment with the outline of
her figure cut slimly against the light which flooded the passage--in
which, as it grew dark, Maisie had lighted a tiny Dutch lamp.
"I love friends who never need to be friends _again_!" she said, in a
low voice, and went out.
Left to himself, Wat Gordon clinched his hands in the swiftly darkening
room. He strode back to the window pettishly, and hated the world.
It was a bad world. Why, for no more than a hasty word, a breath of
foolish speech, a vain and empty dame of wellnigh twice his age,
should he lose the friendship of this one girl in all the world? That
other to whom he had spoken a light word of passing admiration he had
never seen again, nor indeed wished to see. And for no more than this,
forsooth, he must be flouted by her whom his very soul loved! It was a
hard world, a bad world--of which the grim law was that a man must pay
good money, red and white, for that which he desires with his heart and
reaches out his hand to possess himself of.
Just then the street door resounded with the clang of impetuous
knocking. His cousin Will went down, and presently Wat heard the noise
of opening bars, and then the sough of rude, soldier-like speech filled
the stairway.
"Wat Gordon! Wat Gordon!" cried a voice which sounded familiar enough
to him, "come down forthwith! Here! I have brought you a letter from
your love!"
And Wat swore a vow beneath his breath to stop the mouth of the rascal
who knew no better than to shout a message so false and inopportune
in the ears of the girl of the dusky eyelashes. Nevertheless, he went
quickly to the landing and looked down.
A burly figure stood blocking the stairway beneath, and a ruddy face
gleamed upward like a moon out of a mist, as Maisie held the lamp
aloft. A voice, somewhat husky with too recent good living, cried,
"Lochinvar, here is a letter to you from the colonel. Great good may it
do you, but may the last drop in the cogie of him that sent it be the
sourest, for raising Davie Dunbar from the good company and the jolly
pint-stoup, to be splattered at this time of night with the dirty suds
of every greasy frow in all Amersfort!"
And the stout soldier dusted certain befouling drops from his military
coat with a very indignant expression.
"Not that the company was over-choice or the wine fit to be called
aught but poison. 'Mony littles mak' a mickle,' says the old Scots saw.
But, my certes, of such a brew as yon it micht be said 'mony mickles
make but little'! For an it were not for the filling up of your belly,
ten pints of their Amersfort twopenny ale is no more kenned on a man
than so much dishwashings!"
"Come your ways in and sit down, sergeant," said Mistress Maisie,
hospitably. For her hand was somewhat weary with holding the lamp
aloft, while Sergeant Davie Dunbar described the entertainment he had
just left. Meanwhile Wat had opened his scrap of gray official letter,
and appeared to stand fixed in thought upon the words which he found
written therein.
"What may be the import of your message, since you are grown suddenly
so solemn-jawed over it, Wat?" cried Davie Dunbar, going up to look
over his shoulder, while Maisie and Kate McGhie stood talking quietly
apart.
"I am bidden go on a quest into the wild country by the seashore, a
mission that in itself I should like well enough were it not that it
comes to me by the hand of Black Murdo of Barra."
Davie Dunbar whistled thoughtfully.
"When the corbie is from home, it's like to be an ill day for wee lame
lammies!" he said, sententiously. Wat Gordon cocked his guardsman's
cap at the words. He had set it on his head as he went down-stairs.
"I am Walter Gordon, of Lochinvar, and though that be for the nonce but
a barren heritage, I am also a gentleman-private in the prince's Scots
Dragoons, and I count not the Earl of Barra more than a buzzard-kite."
"I see well that ye are but a wee innocent lammie after all," retorted
Sergeant Dunbar; "little ye ken about the regimen of war if at the
outset of a campaign ye begin by belittling your enemy. I tell you,
Murdo of Barra has more brains under his Highland bonnet than all
your gay Douglas dragoons, from your swearing colonel to the suckling
drummer-boy--who no sooner leaves his mother's breast than he learns to
mouth curses and lisp strange oaths."
Wat Gordon shook his head with a certain unconvinced and dour
determination.
"I have been in wild places and my sword has brought me through, but
though I own that, I like not this commission--yet feared of Barra I am
not."
And he handed Davie Dunbar the paper. The sergeant read it aloud:
"Walter Gordon, some time of Lochinvar, of the Prince's
Scottish Dragoon Guards, you are ordered to obtain the
true numeration of each regiment in the camp and city of
Amersfort--their officering, the numbers of each company, and
of those that cannot be passed by the muster officers, the
tally of those sick with fever, and of those still recovering
from it, the number of cannon on the works and where they are
posted. These lists you are to transmit with your own hand to
an officer appointed to receive them by His Highness the Prince
at the Inn of Brederode by the Northern Sanddunes, who will
furnish you with a receipt for them. This receipt you will
preserve and return to me in token that you have fulfilled
your mission. The officers of the regiments and the commanders
of batteries have hereby orders to render you a correct and
instant accompt.
"(Signed) For the Stadtholder and the States-General,
"BARRA,
"_Provost-Marshal of the City and Camp_."
William Gordon had come into the room while the sergeant was reading
the paper, and now stood looking at Walter's unusual commission.
"There will be murder done when you come to our colonel," he said, "and
ask him to tell you that the most part of his regiment is already in
hospital, and also how many of the rest are sickening for it."
But Wat Gordon stood up and tightened his sword-belt, hitching his
sword forward so that the hilt fell easily under his hand. Then he
flipped the mandate carelessly upon the widened fingers of his left
hand before sticking it through his belt.
"It is, at least, an order," he said, grandly, "and so long as I am in
the service of His Highness the Prince, my orders I will obey."
"And pray what else would you do, callant," interjected Sergeant David
Dunbar, "but obey your orders--so long, at least, as ye are sure that
the lad who bids ye has the richt to bid ye?"
CHAPTER II
WHY KATE HATED LOCHINVAR
It was the evening of the following day before Wat Gordon was ready
to start. It had taken him so long to obtain all the invaluable
information as to the strength of the armies of the States-General and
of their allies, which were collected at Amersfort in order to roll
back the threatened invasion of the King of France. Twice during the
day had he rushed into his cousin's lodging for a brief moment in order
to snatch a morsel of food, but on neither occasion had he been able
to catch so much as a glimpse of Kate. It was now the gloaming, and
the night promised to fall clear and chill. A low mist was collecting
here and there behind the clumps of bushes, and crawling low along the
surface of the canals. But all above was clear, and the stars were
beginning to come out in familiar patterns.
For the third and last time Wat made an errand up to his cousin's
rooms, even after his escort had arrived, and once more Maisie took him
gently by the hand, bidding him good-speed on his quest perilous. But
even while his cousin's wife was speaking the young man's eye continued
to wander restlessly. He longed rather to listen to upbraiding from
another voice, and, in place of Maisie's soft, willing kiss, to carry
away the farewell touch of a more scornful hand.
"Cousin," he said at last, reluctantly and a little shyly, "I pray you
say farewell for me to Mistress Kate, since she is not here to bid me
farewell for herself. In what, think you, have I offended her?"
"Nay, Wat," answered the gentle Maisie, "concerning that you must e'en
find means of judging for yourself on your return."
"But listen, Cousin Maisie, this venture that I go upon is a quest of
life or death to me, and many are the chances that I may not return at
all."
"I will even go speak with my gossip Kate, and see whether she will
come to bid you good prospering on your adventure and a safe return
from it."
And so saying Maisie passed from the room as silently as a white swan
swims athwart the mere. In a little while she returned with Kate,
who, beside her budding matronhood, seemed but a young lissom slip of
willow-wand.
"Here, Kate," said Maisie, as she entered holding her friend by the
hand, "is our cousin Wat, come in on us to bid farewell. He goes a far
road and on a heavy adventure. He would say good-bye to the friends who
are with him in this strange land before he departs, and of these you
are one, are you not, my Kate?"
As soon as Mistress Maisie loosened her hand the girl went directly to
the window-seat, where she stood leaning gracefully with her cheek laid
softly against the shutter. She turned a little and shivered at her
friend's pointed appeal.
"If Walter Gordon says it, it must be so," she answered, with certain
quiet bitterness.
Lochinvar was deeply stung by her words. He came somewhat nearer to
her, clasping his hands nervously before him, his face set and pale as
it had never been in the presence of an enemy.
"Kate," he said, "I ask you again, wherein have I so grievously
offended you that, on your coming to this land of exile, you should
treat me like a dog--yes, worse than a wandering cur-dog. It is true
that once long ago I was foolish--to blame, blackly and bitterly in the
wrong, if you will. But now all humbly I ask you to forgive me ere I
go, it may be to my death."
The girl looked at him with a strange light in her eyes--scorn, pity,
and self-will struggling together for the mastery.
At last, in a hard, dry voice, she said, "There is nothing to forgive.
If there had been I should have forgiven you. As it is, I have only
forgotten."
Maisie had left the room and there was deep silence in it and about,
save for the distant crying of the staid Dutch children late at
their plays on the canal-sides of Amersfort, and the clatter of the
home-returning wooden shoon on the pavemented streets. The young
man drew himself up till his height towered above the girl like a
watch-tower over a city wall. His eyes rested steadfastly on her the
while. She had a feeling that a desperate kind of love was in the air,
and that for aught she knew he might be about to clasp her fiercely
in his arms. And it had, perhaps, been well for both if he had, for
at that moment she raised her eyes and her heart wavered within
her. He looked so tall and strong. She was sure that her head would
come no higher upon his breast than the blue ribbon of his cavalry
shoulder-knot. She wondered if his arms would prove as strong as they
looked, if she suddenly were to find herself folded safe within them.
"Kate," he said, wistfully, coming nearer to her.
Now Wat Gordon ought not to have spoken. The single word in the silence
of the room brought the girl back to herself. Instinctively she put out
her hand, as though to ward off something threatening or overpowering.
The gulf yawned instantly between them, and the full flood-tide of Wat
Gordon's opportunity ebbed away as rapidly as it had flowed.
Yet when a moment later the girl lifted her long, dark lashes and
revealed her eyes shining shyly glorious beneath them, Wat Gordon gazed
into their depths till his breath came quick and short through his
nostrils, and a peal of bells seemed to jangle all out of tune in his
heart. He stood like some shy woodland beast new taken in a trap.
"Well?" she said, inquiringly, yet somewhat more softly than she had
yet spoken.
Wat clinched his fist. In that single syllable the girl seemed to lay
all the burden of blame, proof, explanation of the past upon him alone,
and the hopeless magnitude of the task cut him to the quick.
"Kate!" he cried, "I will not again ask you to forgive me; but if I do
not come back, at least believe that I died more worthily than perhaps
I have lived--though neither have I ever lived so as to shame you,
even had you seen me at my worst. And, ere I go, give me at least a
love-token that I may carry it with me till I die."
Kate's lips parted as though she had somewhat to answer if she would,
but she kept a faintly smiling silence instead, and only looked
casually about the room. A single worn glove lay on the top of a little
cabinet of dark oak. She lifted it and handed it to Wat. The young man
eagerly seized the glove, pressed it with quick passion to his lips,
and then thrust it deep into the bosom of his military coat. He would
have taken the hand which gave him the gift, but a certain malicious
innocence in the girl's next words suddenly dammed his gratitude at the
fountain-head.
"I have nothing of my own to give," she said, "for I have just newly
come off the sea. But this glove of Maisie's will mayhap serve as well.
Besides which, I heard her say yestreen that she had some time ago lost
its marrow in the market-place of Amersfort."
[Illustration: "'I WILL TAKE MY OWN LOVE-TOKEN'"]
With a fierce hand Wat Gordon tore the glove from his bosom and threw
it impulsively out of the window into the canal. Then he squared
his shoulders and turned him about in order to stride haughtily and
indignantly from the room.
But even as he went he saw a quaintly subtle amusement shining in the
girl's eyes--laughter made lovely by the possibility of indignant tears
behind it, and on her perfectest lips that quick petulant pout which
had seemed so adorable to him in the old days when he had laid so
many ingenious snares to bring it out. Wat was intensely piqued--more
piqued perhaps than angry. He who had wooed great ladies, and on whom
in the ante-chambers of kings kind damsels all too beautiful had smiled
till princes waxed jealous, was now made a mock of by a slim she-slip
compact of mischievous devices. He looked again and yet more keenly at
the girl by the window. Certainly it was so. Mischief lurked quaintly
but unmistakably under the demure, upward curl of those eyelashes.
A kind of still, calm fury took him, a set desperation like that of
battle.
"I will take my own love-token," he cried, striding suddenly over to
her.
And so, almost but not quite, ere Kate was aware, he had stooped and
kissed her.
Then, in an instant, as soon indeed as he had realized his deed, all
his courage went from him. His triumph of a moment became at once flat
despair, and he stood before her ashamed, abject as a dog that is
caught in a fault and trembles for the lash.
Without a word the girl pointed to the door. And such was the force
of her white anger and scorn upon him that Wat Gordon, who was about
to ride carelessly to face death as he had often done before, slunk
through it cowering and speechless.
Maisie was coming along the little boarded passage as he passed out.
"Farewell, cousin," she said to him. "Will you not bid me good-bye
again ere you go, if only for the old sake's sake?"
But Wat Gordon went past her as though he had not heard, trampling
stupidly down the narrow stairs like a bullock in the market-place, the
spring all gone out of his foot, the upstanding airy defiance fallen
away from his carriage.
Then in a moment more there came up from the street front the sound of
trampling horses and the ring of accoutrement, as three or four riders
set spurs to their horses and rode clattering over the cobbles towards
the city gates.
Maisie went quickly into the sitting-room to her friend.
"What have you been doing to my Wat?" she asked, grasping her tightly
by the arm. "Have you quarrelled with him?"
Kate was standing behind the shutter, looking down the street along
which the four riders were rapidly vanishing. At the corner where they
turned one of the horses shied and reared, bringing down its iron-shod
hoofs sharply on the pavement with a little jet of sparks, and almost
throwing its rider. Instinctively the girl uttered a little cry, and
set her hand against her side.
"What said Wat to you, dearest Kate," asked Maisie, again, altering
the form of her question, "that you sent him thus speechless and
dumfoundered away? He passed me at the stair-head as if he knew me not."
Finding Kate still absorbed and silent, Maisie sat down in her own
chair and waited. Presently, with a long sigh, the girl sank on her
knees beside her, and, taking her friend's hand, set it on her head.
With sympathetic and well-accustomed fingers Maisie, as was her custom,
softly smoothed and caressed the dark tangle of curls. She did not
utter a word till she heard a quick sob catch at the bottom of Kate's
throat. Then she spoke very low, leaning forward till she could lay
her cheek against the girl's brow.
"What said he? Tell me, dearest, if you can; tell your gossip, Maisie,"
she whispered.
It was a voice that not many could resist when it pleaded thus--most
like a dove cooing to its mate in the early summer mornings.
There fell a silence for a while in the little upper room; but Maisie
the wise one did not again speak. She only waited.
"Oh, I hate him!" at last said Kate McGhie, lifting her head with
centred intensity of expression.
Maisie smiled a little, indulgently, leaning back so that her friend's
dark eyes should not notice it. She smiled as one who is in the things
of love at least a thousand years older, and who in her day has seen
and tasted bread sweet and bread bitter.
"And certainly you do well to hate him, my Kate," this cunning Mistress
Maisie said, very gently, her hand continuing to run softly through the
meshes of Kate's curls; "nevertheless, for all that you are glad that
he kissed you."
The girl lifted her head as quickly from its resting-place as though
a needle had pricked her unawares. She eyed her friend with a grave,
shocked surprise.
"You were listening!" she said.
And the censure in her tone might have been that of a General Assembly
of the Kirk, so full of weighty rebuke was it.
"No, Kate," said her friend, quietly. "I was in the kitchen all the
time, putting the bone in the broth for William's supper. I heard
no single word of your talk. But, Kate, my lassie, I am not so very
ignorant concerning these things which you stand on the brink of. Come,
what had you been saying to him to provoke him to kiss you?"
"He but asked me for a love-token to take with him to the wars--which I
gave him, and how could I tell?" said the girl, a little plaintively.
Things had not gone as they ought, and now her own familiar friend was
about to blame her for it.
Maisie waited a moment discreetly, hoping that Kate would go on; but
she appeared to consider that she had said enough. She only pillowed
her head lower on her gossip's knee, and submitted contentedly to the
loving hand which caressed her ringlets.
"And you gave him the love-token?" queried her friend, quietly.
"I told him that I had nothing of my own to give him, because my
baggage had not yet arrived; and it chanced that I saw one of your old
marrowless gloves lying there on the cabinet--so I gave him that. I
thought," she added, plaintively, after a pause, "that it would do just
as well."
At which conclusion Maisie laughed helplessly, rocking to and fro; then
she checked herself, and began again. Kate raised her head and looked
at her in new surprise.
"You are the strangest girl!" at last Maisie said. "You have sundry
passages with a gallant youth. You smile not unkindly upon him. You
quarrel and are separated. After years you meet in a distant land. He
asks you for a gage to carry with him to the wars, a badge fragrant of
his lady and his love, and you give him--an odd glove of his cousin's
wife's. Truly an idea most quaint and meritorious!"
"And Maisie," said Kate, solemnly, looking up at her with her head
still on her hands, "would you believe it? He stamped his foot and
threw the glove out of the window there into the canal! He ought not to
have done that, ought he?"
"My Kate," said her friend, "do not forget that I am no longer a girl,
but a woman wedded--"
"Six months," interrupted Kate McGhie, a little mischievously.
"And when I see the brave lass with whom, in another and a dearer land,
I came through so many perils, in danger of letting foolish anger wrong
both herself and another, you will forgive me if I have a word to say.
I speak because I have come in peace to the goal of my own loving. Wat
loves you. I am sure of that. Can you not tell me what it is that you
have against him? No great matter, surely; for, though reckless and
headstrong beyond most, the lad is yet honest, up-standing, true."
Kate McGhie was silent for a while, only leaning her head a little
harder against the caressing hand.
Then, with her face bent down, she spoke, softly:
"In Scotland he loved _me_ not, but only the making of love. If so be
that Wat Gordon will love me here in the Lowlands of Holland, he must
do it like one that loves for death or life; not like a gay gallant
that makes love to every maid in town, all for dalliance in a garden
pleasaunce on a summer's day."
The girl drew herself up nearer to her friend's face. Maisie Lennox, on
her part, quietly leaned over and laid her cheek against Kate's. It was
damp where a cherry-great tear had rolled down it. Maisie understood,
but said nothing. She only pressed her gossip a little closer and
waited. In a while Kate's arms went gently round about her neck, and
her face drew yet a little nearer to the listening ear.
"Once," she whispered, "I feared that I was in danger of loving him
first and most--and that he but played with me. I feared it much," she
went on, with a little return of the low sob, which caused her friend's
arms to clasp themselves more tightly about her, "I feared that I might
learn to love him too soon. So that is the reason--why--_I hate him
now_!"
CHAPTER III
THE BULL, THE CALF, AND THE KILLER
Wat Lochinvar rode out of the city of Amersfort with anger humming
fierce in his heart, the Black Horseman riding pickaback behind him.
He paid little attention to the three cutthroat-looking knaves who had
been provided as his escort, till the outer port of the city gates
had closed behind him and the chill airs of the outlands, unwarmed by
friendly civic supper-fires, met him shrilly in the teeth.
He had been played with, tricked, betrayed, so he told himself. Never
more would he think of her--the light trifler with men's hearts. She
might gang her own wilful gait for him; but there was one thing he was
well assured of--never more would Wat Gordon trust any woman born of
woman, never speak a word of love to one of the fickle breed again. On
this he was resolved like steel. For him, henceforth, only the stern
elation of combat, the clatter of harness, the joy of the headlong
charge--point to point, eye to eye, he would meet his man, when neither
would be afraid of aught, save of yielding or craving a favor. From
that day forth his sword should be his love, his regiment his married
wife, his cause and king his family; while his faithful charger,
nuzzling against his breast, would bestow on him the only passionate
caresses he would ever know, until on some stricken field it was his
fate to fill a soldier's grave.
Almost could Walter Gordon have wept in his saddle to think of his
wrongs, and death seemed a sweet thing to him beside the fickle favors
of any woman. He bethought him of his cousin Will with something of a
pitying smile.
"Poor fool!" he said to himself; "he is married. He thinks himself
happy. How much better had it been to live for glory!"
But even as he battered himself into a conviction of his own rooted
indifference to the things of love, he began to wonder how long his
present adventure would detain him. Could he be back in time on
the morrow to hear the first trip of a light foot on the stairs in
Zaandpoort Street, as _she_ came from her sleeping-room, fresh as
though God had made her all anew that morning?
For this is a quality of the wisdom of man, that thinking upon a maid
ofttimes makes it vain--especially if the man be very brave or very
wise, and the maid exceeding fair. Gradually, however, the changing
clatter of the dozen hoofs behind Lochinvar forced itself upon his
hearing, and he remembered that he was not alone.
He turned to his followers, and, curbing his horse a little, waited for
them to come up. They ranged themselves two on one side of him and one
on the other. Lochinvar eyed them with surprising disfavor.
"You are surely the last scourings of the camp," he said, brusquely,
for it was too little his habit to beat about the bush; "what may you
have been doing with yourselves? You could not all three have been made
so unhallowedly ugly as that. After all, God is a good God, and kind to
the evil and to the good."
The fellow on Lochinvar's left was a great red-faced man with an
immense scar, where (as it appeared) one side of his face had been cut
away wellnigh to the cheek-bone--a wound which had healed unevenly in
ridges and weals, and now remained of a deep plum-color.
"What is your name?" said Lochinvar to this man.
"I am called Haxo the Bull," he answered, "and I am of the retinue of
my Lord of Barra."
"And how came you by your English?" asked Lochinvar.
"My mother always declared that my father was of that nation," answered
the man, readily enough.
"To conclude," continued Wat, who was impatient of further conference
with such rank knaves, "what might be your distinguished rank in the
service of my Lord of Barra?"
"I am his camp butcher," said the man, laying his hand on a long, keen
knife which swung at his belt on the opposite side from his sword.
"And these other two gentlemen, your honorable companions?" queried
Wat, indicating them over his shoulder with contemptuous thumb.
The hulking fellow of the scar made a gesture with his shoulders, which
said as plain as might be, "They are of age; ask themselves."
But the nearer of the two did not wait to be asked. He was a hairless,
flaccid-faced rogue of a pasty gray complexion, and even uglier than
the plum-colored Bull, with a certain intact and virgin hideousness of
his own.
"I, for my part, am called Haxo's Calf, and I am not ashamed of the
name!" he said.
And, thinking this an excellent jest, he showed a row of teeth like
those of a hungry dog when he snatches a bone from a comrade not his
equal in the fray.
"And, I doubt not, a fit calf of such a sire," quoth Lochinvar, looking
from one to the other.
"He is my apprentice, not my son--praise to the Virgin and all the
saints!" said Haxo, looking at the Calf quite as scornfully as Wat
himself.
Lochinvar now transferred his attention to the third. He wore a small
round cap on the top of his head, and his narrow and meagre forehead
ran back shining and polished to the nape of his neck. His lack-lustre
eyes were set curiously at different angles in his head. He had thin
lips, which parted nervously over black, gaping teeth, and his nose was
broken as if with a blow of a hammer.
"And is this gentleman also of Monsieur Haxo's gallant company, and in
the suite of his Excellency my Lord of Barra?"
Haxo nodded his head with some appreciation of Wat's penetration.
"He is, indeed," he said; "he is my chief slaughterman, and a prince at
his business."
"He is called 'The Killer,'" interjected the Calf, smacking his lips
with unction. "It is a good name for him."
Wat Gordon urged his horse onward with great and undisguised disgust.
To be sent on a dangerous mission with three such arrant rascals told
him the value that his employers set upon his life. And if he had
chanced at that moment to turn him about in his saddle, the evil smile
of triumph which passed simultaneously over the faces of his companions
might have told him still more.
The small cavalcade of four went clattering on through the dusky
coolness of night, across many small wooden bridges and over
multitudinous canals. It passed through villages, in which the
inhabitants were already snoring behind their green blinds the
unanimous antiphonal bass of the rustic just--though, as yet, it was
little past nine of the clock on the great kirk tower of Amersfort,
and in the city streets and in the camp every one was at the height of
merriment and enjoyment.
Wafts of balmy country scents blew across the by-ways along which they
went; and through the limpid gray coolness where the young leaves of
the sparse hedgerow trees brushed his face, Wat could see that he was
passing countless squares of parti-colored bloom. Miles of hyacinth,
crocus, and narcissus gardens stretched away on either hand beyond the
low, carefully cut Dutch hedges. Haxo the Bull rode first, showing them
the way to the inn of Brederode, silently, save that every now and then
he would cry a word over his shoulder, either to one of his ill-favored
retinue or to an unseen watcher at some lonely cross-road.
Wat followed sullenly and fiercely, without caring much about the
direction in which he was being taken. His mind, however, was
preternaturally busy, going carefully over all the points of his
interview with Kate, and very soon from the heights of justified
indignation he fell to accusing himself of rude stupidity.
"I fear she will never look kindly on me again," he said, aloud. "This
time I have certainly offended her forever."
And the thought troubled him more than all the traitorous Barras and
ill-conditioned Bull Haxos in the world.
A breath of perfume blew fresh across the way from a field of dark
purple bloom, and with an overpowering rush there came back to him the
sweet scent of Kate's hair as for a moment he had bent over her by the
window. He let the reins fall on his horse's neck, and almost cried
aloud in agony at the thought of losing so great a treasure.
"And shall I never see her more," he said, "never watch the responsive
blood spring redly to her cheek, never see the anger flash proudly in
her eye, never (were it but for once) touch the sweet tangle of her
hair?"
Wat's love-lorn melancholy might have driven him to further and yet
wilder utterance had he not been conscious of a slight metallic click
behind him, which certainly did not come from the hoofs of the horses.
He turned sharply at the sound and caught Haxo's Calf with a pistol
in his right hand, and the Killer with his long butcher's knife bare
and uplifted. Haxo himself was riding unconcernedly on in front. Wat
quickened the pace of his horse, and rode alongside the Bull.
"Sir Butcher," he said, calmly, "do your men behind there wish to have
their weapons ready in case of meeting the enemy, or do they perchance
desire to flesh them in my back? It may seem a trifling matter to
trouble you with, and of no great consequence, nevertheless I should
somewhat like to ascertain their intentions."
Haxo glanced behind him. The Calf and the Killer were closing in upon
Wat.
"Varlets," cried Haxo, in a terrible voice, "put your weapons in your
belts, ride wide apart and far behind, or I will send you both quick to
hell!"
The men fell asunder at the words, and for a mile or two only the
sound of the horses' feet pounding the hard paven road came to Wat's
ears. But he did not again return to that entrancing dream of Kate,
her beauty, and her hard-heartedness which had so nearly led to his
destruction. Yet, nevertheless, whatever he said or did, he remained
through all that followed conscious of his love for her, and for the
remainder of the night the desire of getting back to Amersfort in order
to see her sharpened every faculty and kept every sense on the alert.
More than once during the night Haxo endeavored to enter into
conversation, but Wat, indignant at the cowardly attempt on his life
(for so he was bound to consider it), waved him peremptorily aside.
"Do your duty without further words," he said; "lead on directly to the
inn of Brederode."
It was long past the gloaming, and already wearing nigh to the
watershed of the night, before the perfectly flat country of marsh and
polder through which they had been riding gave place to a district
in which the undulations of the surface were distinctly felt beneath
the horses' feet. Here, also, the hard-baked, dusty roads gave place
to softer and more loosely knit tracks of sand, on which the iron-shod
hoofs made no sound. They were, in fact, fast approaching that broad
belt of dunes which shuts off the rich, flower-covered nurseries
of Haarlem from the barren, heathy wastes along the borders of the
Northern Sea.
On their right they passed the dark walls of the castle of Brederode,
and pursued their way to the very edge of the lofty dunes, which at
this point are every year encroaching upon the cultivated fields.
Presently they came to a long, low, white building surrounded by dark
hedges, which in the coolness of the night sent out a pleasant odor of
young beech leaves. The court-yard was silent, the windows black. Not a
ray of light was visible anywhere.
Walter Gordon rode directly up to the door. He felt with his hand
that it stood open to the wall, and that a dark passage yawned before
him. Instinctively he drew back a little way to decide what he should
do. With an unknown house before him and a cut-throat crew behind, he
judged that he would be wiser to proceed with extreme caution.
"Keep wide from me at your peril," he cried, threateningly, to his
rascal company. The three horses backed simultaneously, and Haxo, his
Calf and his Killer, waited in an irregular semicircle, while Wat took
out of his pocket a tinder-box and from his holster a candle. There was
not a breath of air, and when Lochinvar lighted the taper the flame
mounted steadily upwards, so that he had no need even to shelter it
with his hand while the flame went down and then as slowly came again,
as all candles do when they are first lighted.
Wat glanced up at the sign of the Black Bull's Head, which was set in
rude caricature over the door of the inn. His mind wandered grimly to
the significance of that emblem in his own country, and to the many
good men and true who had dined with the Black Bull's head on the
table--and thereafter dined no more in this world. And to think that
he, Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, had brought the Bull with him, together
with the Bull-calf and the Killer, to keep him company to the Black
Bull of Brederode! He took the conceit as an omen, and gritted his
teeth to remember what an arrant gull he had been.
"I shall never see my love more," he said under his breath; "well,
never mind, Wat Gordon, lad--if die you must, there are some now alive
who will be in a similar plight ere you turn up your toes. And at all
events I am glad that I kissed her."
He dismounted and drew his sword.
"Stand still where you are," he cried to Haxo. "Advance an inch at your
peril till I give the word."
He looped his horse's rein to the iron hook at the cheek of the inn
door. Then he gripped his sword tighter, and said a prayer which ended
somewhat unorthodoxly:
"I wish I had that glove which I threw into the canal. For, after
all, she gave it to me. Also, her lips pout most adorably when she is
angered."
And this seemed strange enough information to give the Deity. But
without doubt its sincerity carried it further heavenward than many an
empty Credo. For the God who made love does not, like Jove, laugh at
lovers' vows.
CHAPTER IV
THE DUEL AT THE INN OF BREDERODE
So, thinking with all his might upon the adorable pout of his lady's
lips, that right loyal lover Walter Gordon strode, not without fear,
but all the braver for mastering it, into the dark passage which
stretched straight before him, gloomy as a sea cave at midnight. Doors
still blacker yawned on either side of him like the mouths of huge
cannon. He held his candle aloft, and paused a moment at each, striving
with all his might to penetrate the silence that reigned within. But
the faint circle of illumination hardly passed beyond the threshold.
Wat, as he held his breath and listened, only heard the rats scuttle
and the mice cheep in the oaken wainscoting.
It was with a feeling of chill water running icily down his back that
he passed each black cavern, glancing warily over his shoulder lest he
should catch the downward stroke of an arm in the doorway, or see the
candle-light flash on the deadly blade of the Killer's butchering knife.
It was nerve-shaking work. The sweat, chill as the clammy mist of the
night, began to pour down Wat's face, and his flesh grew prickly all
over as though he had been stuck full of pins.
Unless something happened, he felt that in another moment he must
shriek aloud. He stopped and listened. Somewhere near him he felt sure
he could distinguish the sound of breathing. It was not the heavy,
regular to-and-fro respiration of unconscious sleep, but rather the
quicker and shorter breathing of one who has recently undergone severe
exertion, and whose heart still runs fast ahead.
Wat stood and listened. The sound came from half-way up the stairs, out
of a room with a door which opened wider than the others, and which now
stood, gaping black and ominous, directly before him. Wat could hear
the sound of feet behind him, cautiously shuffling on the flags of the
doorway, and by this sign he knew that his three ruffians were there
waiting for him with the weapons of their trade naked and deadly in
their hands. He was trapped, taken between the brutal, dastard butchers
behind him and the unknown but more terrible breathers in the dark
above him.
Yet his very desperation brought a compensating calmness. He pressed
his arm against his side, where, in an inner pocket, he carried the
papers he had come to deliver. He undid the button of his cloak, and
let it fall to the ground to clear his sword-arm. Then, bending forward
like a runner straining to obtain good pace at the start of a short
race, he went up the stairs steadily and warily till he had reached the
door of the room. His candle was almost blown out with the quickness
of his motion. It flickered low, and then caught again, as Wat stepped
nimbly within, and made the point of his sword circle about him to
clear himself a space against attack.
Then he looked around him. He found himself in a wide, low-ceilinged
room, with many small windows along the side. A curtain of arras
hung at one end, and a table stood in front of it--a hall of rustic
assembly, as it seemed. At the far side of the table from him and
between its edge and the curtain, calm as though it had been broad
day, sat a tall, thin man. He had red hair and a short red beard, both
liberally sprinkled with gray. His eyes were of a curious China blue,
pale and cold. He was clad in a French uniform, and a pair of pistols
and a drawn sword lay on the table before him.
The man sat perfectly still, with his elbows on the table and his chin
on the knuckles of the hands which were joined beneath his beard. His
eyes were alive, however, and surveyed Wat Gordon from head to foot.
The effect of this scrutiny upon the man in the chair was somewhat
surprising.
He started half-way to his feet, and so disturbed the table behind
which he sat that one of the pistols rolled off and fell underneath,
so that the butt appeared on the side nearest to Wat. At the noise the
arras behind was disturbed, and Lochinvar felt that unseen eyes were
watching and unseen ears listening behind its shelter.
Wat, on his side, was not less astonished. For at the first glance he
knew the man at the table.
"Jack--Jack Scarlett?" he stammered, half holding out and half
withholding his hand, as to a friend met unexpectedly in more than
doubtful circumstances. The man nodded without appearing to notice the
outstretched hand, and continued to look the young man over with the
pale, piercing eyes of blue.
"Then you are the officer of the prince appointed to receive my
despatches?" cried Wat, when words came back to him.
The man whom Wat had called Jack Scarlett shook his head.
"With another I might pretend it," he said, "but not with you, Lord of
Lochinvar. Now do I see that Barra plots deeper and yet more simply
than I had given his Highland brains credit for. I little knew that
the cavalier whom I was to meet to-night was Wat Gordon, mine ancient
scholar and good ally."
"It pleases you to speak riddles with your tongue, John," replied
Walter, "you that were wont to strike so strong and straight with the
blade of steel. You that know me well, mine old master of the fence, I
beseech to speak plainly and riddle to me no more."
Scarlett never took his blue eyes off Lochinvar's face as he spoke.
"We are here, my Lord of Lochinvar, in the matter of a most serious
conference," he said; "therefore, do not stand there fixed and
forwandered in the midst of the floor. Set your candle on a sconce and
be seated."
Wat shook his head.
"There are too many perils behind me and before," he replied; "I must
have light and room to guard my head ere I can sit or talk with you or
any man, seeing that my life is not my own so long as my commission
remains unfulfilled."
Scarlett knocked three times loudly on the board in front of him.
In a moment the arras stirred behind, and a man-at-arms appeared. He
was clad in a pale-blue uniform, unlike any that Wat had seen in the
army of the States-General.
"Bring lights," said Scarlett to him in French.
In a few minutes the room was fully illumined by the rays of half
a dozen candles set in a pair of silver candlesticks, each of them
holding three lights.
Then Scarlett pointed Wat to a chair.
"Surely you will do me the honor to be seated now," he said,
courteously.
Wat replied by picking up a cross-legged stool of black oak and setting
it down at the angle of the room, at the point most distant from the
arras, and also from the door by which he had entered. Then he sat down
upon it, still holding his sword bare in his right hand, and made the
point of it play with the toe of his buff leathern riding-boot, while
he waited impatiently for Scarlett to speak.
The man at the table had never once removed his eyes from Lochinvar's
face. Then in a quiet, steady, unhurried voice he began to speak:
"You have not forgotten, my Lord of Lochinvar--"
At the repetition of the title Walter stirred his shoulders a little
disdainfully.
"I say again, my Lord of Lochinvar has not forgotten--my lord has every
right to the title. It was given to his ancestors by the grandfather of
his present majesty--"
"His present majesty?" said Walter, looking up inquiringly.
"Aye," replied Scarlett, with some apparent heat, "His Most Gracious
Majesty James the Second, King of Great Britain and Ireland. Since when
did Walter Gordon of Lochinvar need to stand considering who has the
right to be styled his lawful king?"
And the keen, cold eyes glinted like steel blades in the candle-light.
"It was in fencing and not in loyalty that I took lessons from you,
John Scarlett," replied Lochinvar, haughtily, looking with level brows
at the red-bearded man across the table, who still leaned his chin on
the tips of his fingers. "I pray you, say out your message and be done."
"But this is my message," Scarlett went on, "which I was commanded to
deliver to the man whom I should meet here in the inn of Brederode. You
are the servant of King James, and his messages and commands are yours
to obey."
Wat Gordon bowed stiffly. "In so far," he said, "as they do not
conflict with my orders from my superior officers in the service of the
Prince of Orange, in whose army I am at present a humble soldier."
"You are indeed a soldier in the Scottish Guards, which were raised
in that country by permission of King James, and by him lent to his
son-in-law, the Stadtholder of Holland. But surely the commands of
your king are before all; before the mandates of Parliament, before the
commands of generals--aye, before even the love of wife and children."
And the sonorous words brought a fire into the cold eyes of the speaker
and an answering erectness into the pose of Wat Gordon, who had
hitherto been listening listlessly but watchfully as he continued to
tap the point of his riding-boot with his sword-blade.
"I have yet to hear what are the commands of his majesty the king,"
said Wat, lifting his hat at the name.
Scarlett tossed a sealed paper across the table, and as Wat rose to
take it he kept a wary eye on the two chief points of danger--the
division in the arras and the door, behind which, as he well knew, were
stationed those three worthy gentry of my Lord Barra's retinue, Haxo
the Bull, the Calf, and the Killer.
Wat took the paper with his left hand, broke the seal, and unfolded it
by shaking it open with a quick, clacking jerk. It read thus:
_JAMES II., by the GRACE OF GOD, etc._
_It is my command that John Scarlett, Lieutenant of the
Luxemburg Regiment in the service of the King of France, obtain
the papers relating to the numbers and dispositions of the
troops of the States-General in the city and camp of Amersfort,
which I have reason to believe to be in the possession of
my trusty servant and loving Cousin, Walter Gordon, Lord of
Lochinvar in Galloway._
_At Whitehall, this 14 of Aprile, 1688._
_JAMES R._
Walter bent his knee, kissed the king's message, and, rising to his
feet, as courteously folded it and handed it back to Lieutenant
Scarlett.
"I am the king's subject, it is true," he said. "Moreover, the king is
anointed, and his word binds those to whom it is addressed. But I am
also the soldier of the Prince of Orange and of the States-General of
Holland. I eat their bread; I wear their uniform; I take their pay; to
them I have sworn the oath of allegiance. I am in this inn of Brederode
as a plain soldier, charged with orders given to me by my superior
officer, and I cannot depart from these orders while I live a free man
and able to carry them out."
"But the king--the king--?" sternly reiterated Scarlett, rising for the
first time to his feet, and clapping the palm of his hand sharply on
the table by way of emphasis.
"The king," replied Walter, in a voice deeply moved, "is indeed my
king. But he has no right to command a soldier to become a traitor,
nor to turn an honest man into a spy. He may command my life and my
fortunes. He may command my death. But, landless, friendless, and an
exile though I be, mine honor at least is mine own. I refuse to deliver
the papers with which I have been intrusted, or to be a traitor to the
colors under which I serve."
While Walter spoke Scarlett stood impatiently tapping the table with
the paper, which he had refolded.
"The request, at any rate, is nothing more than a formality," he said.
"You are here alone. Your three attendant rascals are, equally with
myself, in the pay of the King of France. They wait under arms at that
door--"
"Under butchers' knives, say rather!" interrupted Lochinvar, scornfully.
But Scarlett paid no heed to his words.
"If you will deliver up the papers cheerfully, according to the mandate
of your king, I have in my pocket a patent of nobility made out for the
man who should put them into my hand at the inn of Brederode--besides
the promise of pardons and restoration of heritages for all his friends
and associates at present lying outside the law in Scotland and
elsewhere. Think well, for much more than the present hangs upon your
answer. Life and death for many others are in it!"
Wat stood still without making any answer. With his left hand he turned
the dainty lace upon the cuff of his coat-sleeve carefully back. He
thought vaguely of his love whom he was renouncing to go to certain
death, of the friends whose pardon he was refusing. Most clearly of all
he bethought him of the old tower in the midst of the Loch of Lochinvar
under the heathery fell of lone Knockman. Then he looked straight at
the man before him.
"Jack Scarlett," he said, "it was you who taught me how to thrust and
parry. Then your hand was like steel, but your heart was not also hard
as the millstone. You were not used to be a man untrue, forsworn. God
knows then, at least, you were no traitor. You were no spy. You were
no murderer, though a soldier of fortune. You called me a friend, and
I was not ashamed of the name. I do not judge you even now. You may
have one conception of loyalty to the king we both acknowledge. I have
another. You are in the service of one great prince, and you are (I
believe it) wholly faithful to him. Do me the honor to credit that I
can be as faithful to my uniform, as careless of life, and as careful
of honor in the service of my master as you would desire to be in
yours."
Scarlett turned his eyes away. He felt, though he did not
yet acknowledge, the extraordinary force and fervor of the
appeal--delivered by Wat with red-hot energy, with a hiss in the swift
words of it like that which the smith's iron gives forth when it is
thrust into the cooling caldron.
Wat turned full upon him. The two men stood eye to eye, with only the
breadth of the table between them.
"Look you, Scarlett," Lochinvar said again, without waiting for his
reply. "You are the finest swordsman in the world; I am but your
pupil; yet here and now I will fight you to the death for the papers
if you will promise to draw off your men and give me free passage from
this place should I kill you or have you at my mercy. But I warn you
that you will have to kill me without any mercy in order to get the
documents from me."
Scarlett appeared to consider for a space.
"There is no risk, and, after all, it makes it less like a crime," he
said, under his breath. But aloud he only answered, "I will fight you
for the papers here and now."
Walter bowed his head, well pleased.
"That is spoken like my old Jack!" he said.
Lieutenant Scarlett went to the arras and threw it open with both
hands. It ran with brazen rings upon a bar in the Flemish manner.
"Clairvaux! Ferrand!" he cried.
And two young officers in gay uniforms immediately appeared.
"Gentlemen," he said, addressing them, "this is Walter Gordon, Lord of
Lochinvar. He has done me the honor to propose crossing swords with me
here in this room. If he should kill me or have me at his mercy he is
to be allowed free passage and outgate. Also he fights far from his
friends, and therefore one of you will be good enough to act as his
second."
The younger of the two officers, he who had answered to the name of
Ferrand, a tall, fair-haired Frenchman of the Midi, at once said, "I
shall consider it an honor to act as second to the Sieur of Lochinvar."
"In the event of my death you will consider these orders imperative,
and equally binding upon your honor as upon mine own," said John
Scarlett.
The two officers bowed.
"I think we should know the length of each other's swords by this
time," he said, looking at Wat; "there is therefore no need that our
seconds should measure them." For he had noted Walter's disinclination
to let his weapon leave his hand. So far as his own life was concerned,
Wat hoped little from this combat. But he desired greatly to die an
honorable death, with his face to a worthy enemy; for John Scarlett had
been in his time the greatest swordsman in Europe, and though Walter
was by far his ablest pupil in Scotland, yet at no time could he have
stood any chance in open field against his master.
So, as the swords felt one another after the salute, Wat set his teeth
and wondered how long it would last, and how much Kate would ever know.
There is little need to describe the fight at length. From the first
Scarlett contented himself with keeping his opponent's blade in play,
feeling it, humoring it, and, as it were, coaxing it into position.
And for some bouts Wat fought without any of that verve and lightning
versatility of fence which were his usual characteristics in action.
Something seemed to paralyze his powers and weigh down his sword-blade,
as though the quick and living steel had turned to lead in his hand.
It might be that the feeling of ancient pupilage had returned to him,
for to himself he seemed rather to be taking a lesson in the finesse
of defence than to be fighting against terrible odds for his life and
honor.
But suddenly a wonderful change came over him. A laugh was heard out in
the passage, in which stood Haxo the Bull and his satellites--a laugh
thin, acrid, unmistakable. It stung Wat to the roots of his heart.
For a moment he was in difficulty. The problem divided his mind even
between thrust and parry. There was no man whom he knew well whose
laugh rang like that. But even as he fought he remembered how once, in
the palace of the stadtholder, he had seen the prince come in leaning
upon the arm of a young, dark-haired man, whose meagre, hatchet face
was decorated, for all ornament, with a black mustache so scanty that
it seemed twisted of twenty hairs, and whose ends hung down, one on
either side of his lips, like a couple of rats' tails. This, and a
certain bitter, rasping laugh to which he had at once taken a dislike,
were all Wat remembered of that young man. But after the distinguished
party had passed in to supper he learned that the prince's companion
and confidant was one of his own nation, Murdo McAlister, Lord of
Barra and the Small Isles, and that he was one to whom the Prince of
Orange looked for counsel in all that did not touch the ecclesiastical
position of affairs of Scotland.
The laugh which rang out from the dark passage behind the Bull,
the Calf, and the Killer was the same which he had heard at the
supper-party of the stadtholder.
From that moment Wat knew that in no event had he now any chance for
his life. It mattered little whether or not he killed John Scarlett.
Barra would certainly have the papers. For he knew the man well enough
to know that, having taken such trouble to obtain the return of the
numbers and positions for his own traitorous purposes, he would never
let the bearer of them slip through his fingers. No oaths of his
own or another would serve to bind Murdo of the Isles in that which
concerned his schemes. Yet even in that moment of agony Wat could not
help wondering why Barra had taken so difficult and roundabout a way of
obtaining and transmitting a paper which it would have been perfectly
easy for him to have gained by means of his official position, and to
have forwarded to the King of France by more ordinary channels. But,
however this may be, certain it is that the laugh irritated Wat Gordon
strangely, and at the first sound of it he sprang towards Scarlett with
an energy and fierceness entirely unlike the lassitude with which he
had previously fought.
From that moment he forced the fighting, attacking with furious vigor
and astonishing rapidity, so that the great master-at-arms soon found
that even he had enough to do simply to stand it out on the defensive.
Yet Scarlett smiled, too, for he thought that this bout of youthful
fury would soon wear itself down, and that then he would easily enough
get in his favorite deadly thrust in quart, to which no answer had ever
yet been discovered.
But Walter never gave him time; for again the acrid laugh came from
the dark passage and set all the young man's blood tingling to put a
sword deep in the traitor's throat, and then, if need be, die with his
foot on his enemy's breast. He sped two thrusts one after the other so
swiftly that Scarlett, countering over-late for the first, had to leap
back in order to measure his distance for the second. In so doing his
foot slipped, and his blade, caught unexpectedly by Lochinvar's, went
ringing against the ceiling and fell on the floor. Walter's point was
at his breast the next moment.
"Yield!" said Walter; "I hold you to your word. You are at my mercy."
"I yield," said Scarlett. "It was well done. Never before in any land
was I thus vanquished in a fair fight."
CHAPTER V
HAXO THE BULL INTERFERES
Walter bowed and returned him his sword, holding it by the blade.
"And now, Lieutenant Scarlett," he said, "I desire to ride back to
Amersfort, and you, I doubt not, wish as eagerly to return whence you
came--by sea to Flanders, as I guess. I shall be grateful, therefore,
if you will draw off your company, and give an order that my horse be
brought to that door which is in possession of your own men."
At this moment Haxo the Bull stepped into the room.
"Not so fast by a great deal, master-fighter with windlestraws," he
cried. "If it have pleased this friend of yours and traitorous officer
of the King of France to make a public bargain upon the issue of a
private duel, that has nothing to do with me. There are many other
fights to be fought ere you leave this house with the papers safe
in your pocket. Listen," he continued, addressing the officers and
soldiers standing in the opposite doorway behind Lieutenant Scarlett:
"are you to lose your reward and be left without reason or remedy here
in the very heart of an enemy's country--your work undone, your doom
sealed? For if ye let him escape, this fellow will instantly set the
prince's horsemen or his swift Dutch ships upon your track. Better to
kill him and take his papers without delay, when rewards and promotions
will assuredly be yours on your return to your master."
It was easy to see that this harangue had not been the inspiration of
Haxo himself, for he delivered it, now trippingly and now haltingly,
like a schoolboy who does not know the meaning of his lesson. But yet
it was perfectly comprehensible to all in the room, and Wat could see
that the purport of it moved the officers and men greatly. The wide
archway behind the table from which the arras had been drawn back was
now thronged with faces.
Wat Gordon stood aside whistling an air softly, like one who waits for
a discussion to be concluded in which he has no interest. He had not so
much as looked at Haxo the Bull while he was speaking.
But John Scarlett grew redder and redder as he listened, and so soon
as the butcher was finished he started towards him so abruptly and
fiercely that that worthy gat himself incontinently behind the weapons
of his allies, the Calf and the Killer, with an alacrity which seemed
quite disproportionate to his physical condition.
"I am the commander here," Scarlett cried, "and I am bound by my
promise. I am determined to let this man go according to my word. Stand
back there!"
But the elder of the two French officers came forward.
He saluted Scarlett and addressed himself directly to him.
"Lieutenant Scarlett," he said, "I am your equal in rank though not
in standing. We were sent here under your orders to obtain certain
despatches of great importance to our general and to the coming
campaign. We shall therefore be compelled to take this man with us,
with all the papers in his possession, and to report your conduct to
the commander at headquarters."
His words appeared first to amuse and then to infuriate John Scarlett.
Striking suddenly at the triple candlestick on his right, he leaped
over the table, crying, "Down with the lights! I am with you, Wat
Gordon. Through the door and have at them out into the open. It is your
only chance."
Wat, whose sword was ready in his hand, struck sideways at the other
group of lights and sent them crashing to the floor. Most of these
went out at once in their fall, but one or two continued to burn for
a moment with a faint light as they lay among the trampling feet. Wat
threw himself at the doorway in which he had heard the laugh, and
through which Scarlett had preceded him a moment before. Wat could hear
that valiant sworder somewhere in front of him, striking good blows
and swearing, "Out with you, devil's brats!" at the top of his voice.
So when he reached the end of the passage he found at the outer door
Scarlett making brisk play with four or five men, who were endeavoring
to hem him into a narrow space where he should not have the liberty of
his sword-arm.
Wat ranged himself beside his late enemy, the two long blades began
to flicker fatally in the starlight, and the hurt men to cry out and
stagger away. Then quite unexpectedly the crowd in front broke and fled.
"Get on your horse, Wat!" Scarlett cried. "I can keep the door against
these loons of mine--at least till you are well out of the way."
There were two good horses, one on either side of the doorway--Wat's,
and that upon which Haxo had ridden. Wat sprang upon his own, and, with
a cut of his sword, Scarlett divided the halter. The horse wheeled and
set off at a gallop through the sand-hills. Yet he went reluctantly,
for, had it not been for the safety of his papers, Wat would gladly
have stayed and helped John Scarlett to engage the whole of the army of
France, with any number of Bulls and Killers in addition thereto.
For, as he vanished into the black night, he could hear John Scarlett
advising the first man who desired three feet of cold steel through
his vitals to step up and be accommodated. And as he turned eastward
towards Amersfort, riding beneath the silent bulk of the old castle of
Brederode, he heard again the clash of iron and the cry of pain which
he knew so well. He smiled a little grimly, and wished nothing better
than that his papers had been delivered, and he again at work at his
old master's elbow.
Presently, however, having, as it seemed to him, left all possibility
of pursuit behind, Wat put his horse into an easier pace, and rode
on by silent and unfrequented paths towards the east, judging his
direction by the stars--which had been an old study of his when it was
his hap to take to the heather in the black days of the Covenant in
Scotland.
As he went he became aware of the noise of a horse galloping swiftly
behind him. He drew his sword and stood on the defence, lest the sound
should betoken a new danger; but presently he heard a voice calling his
own name loudly:
"Wat Gordon! I say, Wat Gordon!"
It was the voice of Jack Scarlett, his late enemy and present deliverer.
He rode up beside Walter, very strange to look upon, clad in some suit
of white or pale blanket-color that glimmered in the dusk of the night.
"I gave half a dozen of the rascals that which it will be two days or
they get the better of, I'se warrant," he said, chuckling to himself;
"and then, thinking that mayhap I might not be welcome any longer in
the army of France, I e'en came my ways after you. As I rode I cast my
uniform and left my commission in the pocket of my coat. So I am but
poor masterless Jack Scarlett once more--a free comrade looking for a
regiment, and equipped with nothing but his thews and his long sword,
which, God be thanked, are both his own. Think ye the States-General
and the Yellow Prince have need of such as I?"
"And how now about the anointed king?" Wat could not help saying.
"The anointed king is safe in Whitehall, and can afford to wait till
Jack Scarlett is a little less hungry," answered the free-lance,
frankly.
Having been thus fortunate in obtaining the only two good horses about
the inn of Brederode (for the Frenchmen had come by sea to the little
port of Lis-op-Zee, and the horses of the Calf and the Killer were but
sorry jades), Scarlett had ridden all the way back without a challenge,
or so much as encountering any sound more threatening than the roopy
chuckle of disturbed poultry on the farm-house roosts as he clattered
by on his way.
As the two horsemen came nearer to the city, and the east began to
send up a fountain of rosy hues to mingle with the gray spaces of the
early morning, Wat could not help laughing at the figure his comrade
presented. The master-at-arms was attired simply and Spartanly in such
darned and patched underclothing as he had amassed during half a dozen
campaigns. These were not all of the same material nor color. They were
not, indeed, at all points strictly continuous, the native hide being
allowed to show itself through here and there, while only the long
sword belted about the waist and the cavalry boots remained to tell of
the well-seasoned man of wars and stratagems.
Jack Scarlett was noways offended at Wat's frank laughter. He even
glanced down at himself with a comically rueful air.
"I wish to the saints that I had met somebody else in this garb," he
said; "and then I own I could have laughed myself off my horse."
But, nevertheless, laugh he did, and that most heartily, like a
good-humored carle, at the figure of sin he cut in the morning light;
and specially he was delighted at the paralyzed astonishment of a lank,
hobbledehoy gooseherd who came trolloping along a path towards a canal
bridge, yawning so that his lower jaw and his head well-nigh dropped
apart. For at sight of the red-bearded man in the white sacking and
top-boots the wand-twirling yokel gave a yell sudden as the popping of
a cork, and forthwith fled, running fleet-foot along the edge of the
canal as though the devil himself had been tattering at his tail.
"This guiser's mode will never do to enter the city of Amersfort
withal!" quoth Scarlett, looking down at his own inconsequent
ragamuffin swathings.
And he paused to consider the problem, while Wat divided himself
between chuckling at his late enemy's dilemma, thinking what he would
say in his coming interview with Barra in the camp, and (what occupied
nine out of every ten minutes) wondering how Kate McGhie would receive
him in the street of Zaandpoort.
At last the man in the white bandagings had an idea. He clapped his
hand suddenly to his brow.
"What a dull dotard am I to forget Sandy Lyall!"
"I know," he continued in explanation, "a certain honest fool of a Scot
that hath wedded a wife of the country. He lives but a mile from here
and breeds young Flamands for the prince's armies, and ducks for the
Amersfort market. We will e'en go find him, and make him deliver of the
best in his wardrobe. For he and I count kin in some seventeenth or
eighteenth degree, though this is the first time I ever bethought me of
claiming it."
And with no more words John Scarlett turned his horse briskly down a
side lane, just as the sun was rising and beginning to shine ruddily
brown through the morning haze. The sails of a score of windmills
darted up suddenly black in the level rush of light, and every hissing
goose and waddling, matronly hen had a rosy side and a gray side,
together with an attenuated shadow which stretched up the dikes and
away across the polders.
Presently Scarlett and his companion, at the foot of a leafy by-lane,
came to the house of the Scot who had married the Flemish wife for the
very practical purposes described by Scarlett.
The madcap figure in white went forward to the door, while Wat remained
behind cackling helplessly with idiot laughter. Scarlett thundered on
the warped and sun-whitened deal of the panels with the hilt of his
sword. Then, receiving no response, he kicked lustily with his boots
and swore roundly at the unseen occupants in a dozen camp dialects.
During his harangues, sulky maledictions grumbled intermittently from
the house. Presently an upper window flew open, a splash of dirty
water fell souse on the warrior, and still more sadly bedraggled the
preposterous quixotry of his attire.
The temper of the master-at-arms was now strained to the
breaking-point. "Sandy Lyall," he cried--and to do him justice,
his voice was more full of sorrow than of anger--"Sandy Lyall, of
Pittenweem, listen to me, John Scarlett, gin ye dinna come doon this
minute and get me a suit o' claes, warm and dry, I'll thraw your dirty
Fifish neck--aye, like a twist of rotten straw at a rick-thatching."
But even this explicit malediction threatened to go by without effect.
But at long and last there looked out of the small diamond-paned window
from which the jar of water had fallen the head of a respectable enough
woman, who wore a red shawl wrapped round her coarse black hair in the
fashion of a nightcap.
[Illustration: "SCARLETT THUNDERED ON THE PANELS WITH THE HILT OF HIS
SWORD"]
"Decent woman," cried Jack Scarlett to her, "is your man at hame?"
But the woman, feather-bed sleep yet blinking heavily in her eyes,
threw up her hands and shrieked aloud at the unexpected apparition of
a man thus mountebanking before her window in white and incomplete
skin-tights.
Without articulate speech she withdrew her head and fled within.
Whereat Scarlett fell to louder knocking than before, exclaiming all
the while on the idleness, incapacity, and general uselessness of
such men of Fife as had married foreigneering sluts, and especially
threatening what he would do to the particular body and soul of Sandy
Lyall, sometime indweller in the ancient borough of Pittenweem.
"Never did I see such a man. The ill-faured wife o' him settin' her
head out o' a winnock-sole at five in the morning, and Sandy himsel'
lyin' snorkin' an' wamblin' in his naked bed like a gussy swine in a
stye! Lord, Lord, wait till I get my hands on him! I'll learn him to
keep honester men than himsel' waitin' on the loan of his Sabbath gear,
crawling partan o' the East Neuk that he is!"
"Aye, John Scarlett, man, but is that you, na?" drawled a quiet, sleepy
voice at the window. "Wha wad hae thocht on seeing you in mountebank's
cleading so early in the morning? Hae ye been at some play-actin' near
by? Ye dinna look as if you had gotten muckle for your pains. Come awa
ben, and I'll gar the wife rise an' get ye porridge--siclike porridge
as ane can get in this Guid-forsaken country, that is mair like
hen-meat than decent brose for Scots thrapples, to my thinkin'!"
"Sandy Lyall!" cried Scarlett, still much incensed, "hear to me! Come
down this instant and let me in! Gi'e me a pair o' trews, a coat, and
a decent cloak, and let me be gaun, for I am on an errand of great
importance which takes me before the Prince of Orange himsel' this very
morning, and it befits not a Scot and a soldier to appear before his
high mightiness in this costume."
"I'll come doon the noo, as fast as I can don my gear and truss my
points!" cried Sandy Lyall. "Ye were aye a rude man and unceevil a' the
days o' ye, John Scarlett. But I canna leave ony Scots lad to want for
a pair o' breeks and a cloak to cover his nakedness--or what amounts to
the same thing, as the monkey said when he sat down on the hot girdle
and gat up again before he was fairly rested."
And with these words, Sandy Lyall, of Pittenweem, in the shire of Fife,
slowly descended, his feet sounding portentously on the wooden ladder.
The door opened, and there was the master of the dwelling standing with
outstretched hand, bidding his compatriots welcome to his house. The
action would have disarmed a Cossack of Russia. It quenched the anger
of John Scarlett like magic.
"Aye, man, an' hoo's a' wi' ye?" he said, as it is the custom for all
Scots to say when they forgather with one another in any land under the
sun.
After turning out of one drawer and another various articles of his
wife's attire, which were clearly not intended (as Sandy remarked)
"for breeks to a grown man like John Scarlett," the master of the
house at last managed to array his friend somewhat less unsuitably in
a coat of dark-blue Rotterdam cloth, adorned with tails, which on his
thinner figure clapped readily together in a military manner; a pair of
breeches of tanned leather went very well with the boots and sword-belt
of buff, which were all that remained to Scarlett of his fine French
uniform. The master-at-arms surveyed himself with no small satisfaction.
"For a Fifer, ye are a man of some discernment," he said; "and your
duds fit me no that ill. They maun hae been made for ye when ye were
younger, and altogether a better-lookin' figure o' a man!"
"Aye; they were cutted oot for me when I was coortin'--no this ane,"
Sandy Lyall explained, indicating his present wife with a placid,
contemptuous thumb, "but a braw, weel-tochered lass oot o' the pairish
o' Sant Andros. But she wadna hae me because I cam' frae Pittenweem.
She said I smelled o' fish-creels."
"And what, Master Lyall, might have brought you to Flanders?" asked
Wat, who had been waiting as patiently as he might while his companion
arrayed himself.
He thought that this otiose burgher of Pittenweem must be a strange
subject for the religious enthusiasm which was mostly in these days the
cause of a man's being exiled from his native country.
"Weel," returned Sandy, with immense and impressive gravity, checking
off the details upon the palm of one hand with the index-finger of the
other, "ye see the way o't was this: There was a lass, and there was a
man, and there was me. And the man and me, we baith wanted the lass--ye
comprehend? And the lass didna want but ane o' us. And that ane wasna
me. So I gied the man a clour, and he fell to the grund and didna get
up. And the lass she gaed and telled. So that was the way that I left
my native land for conscience' sake."
Wat marvelled at the simple, quiet-looking man who had so strenuously
arranged matters to his satisfaction before leaving his love and the
land of his birth.
"Aye, but that wasna the warst o' it," Sandy Lyall went on, "for,
a' owin' to that lang-tongued limmer, I had to leave ahint me as
thrivin' a cooper's business as there was in a' the heartsome toon o'
Pittenweem--aye, and as mony as half a score o' folk owin' me siller!
But I owed ither folk a deal mair, and that was aye some consolation."
CHAPTER VI
THE PRINCE OF ORANGE
In a long, low, narrow room in the palace of the stadtholder in the
city of Amersfort, sat Murdo, Lord of Barra and the Small Isles. The
head of a great though isolated western clan, he had detached himself
from the general sentiments of his people with regard to religion and
loyalty. First his father and then he himself had taken the Covenanting
side in the national struggle--his father through interest and
conviction, the son from interest alone. Both, however, had carried
with them the unquestioning loyalty of their clan, so that it became
an important consideration to any claimant for the throne of Britain
who desired quietness in the north to have on his side the McAlisters,
Lords of Barra and the Small Isles.
The Prince of Orange had given to both father and son a welcome and
a place of refuge when the storm of persecution shook even the wild
Highlands and the government was granting to its more zealous adherents
letters of fire and sword for the extirpation of suspected clans, and
especially for the encouragement of the well-affected by the plunder of
rebels and psalm-singers.
Now, in acknowledgment of this timely succor and safe harborage, Barra
had, ever since his father's death, given his counsel to the prince on
many matters concerning Scotland. Yet, though Murdo McAlister had been
used, he had never been fully trusted by William of Orange, nor yet by
those wise and farseeing men who stood closest about him. Something
crafty in Barra's look, something sinister in his eye, kept those who
knew him best from placing complete confidence in him. And there were
those who made no difficulty about declaring that Murdo of Barra had a
foot in either camp, and that, were it not for the importance of the
information sent from Holland to the court of James the Second, my
Lord of Barra could very well return home, and enjoy his long barren
moorlands and wave-fretted heritages in unvexed peace.
It was yet early morning when Wat and John Scarlett stood before my
Lord of Barra in the palace room which he occupied as provost-marshal
of the city and camp. They saluted him civilly, while his cold,
viperish eye took in the details of their attire with a certain chill
and insolent regard, which made Wat quiver from head to foot with
desire to kill him.
To judge by the provost-marshal's reception, he might never have seen
either of them before. Yet Lochinvar was as certain as that he lived
that it was his laugh which had jarred upon him in the passage behind
Haxo in the inn of Brederode, and which had been the means of bringing
the combat to a close. Yet he, too, must have ridden fast and far since
the fight at the inn, if Wat's vivid impression had any basis in fact.
"Your business with me?" inquired Barra, haughtily, looking straight
past them into the blank wall behind.
"You know my business," said Walter, abruptly. "I carried out your
orders in collecting information with regard to the number of the
troops, the position of the regiments, and the defences of the camp and
city. This report I was ordered to deliver to an officer of the prince
privately--in order, as I was informed, not to offend those dignitaries
of the city and others who hated the war and wished ill-success to
the prince's campaigns. I set out, therefore, last evening with three
of your retainers, supplied for the purpose by you, to the inn of
Brederode. There I was met, not by an accredited servant of the prince,
but by an officer of the French king, who endeavored first by promises
and then by force to obtain the papers from me; and now I have brought
back the reports safely to Amersfort, to lay them before the prince
in person, and, at the same time, to tax you with double-dealing and
treachery."
Barra listened with an amused air.
"And pray, whom do you expect to delude with this cock-and-bull story?"
he said. "Not, surely, the prince, in whose company I was till a late
hour last night; and not surely myself, who never in my life either
issued or heard of any such preposterous order."
"I demand to see the prince, to whom I shall speak my mind," reiterated
Walter, still more curtly.
"You shall see the inside of a prison in a few moments," returned
Barra, with vicious emphasis. But ere he could summon an officer the
inner door opened, and there entered a dark, thin, sallow-faced man,
with brilliant, hollow-set eyes, who walked with his head a little
forward, as if he had gone all his life in haste.
It was the Prince of Orange himself, dressed in his general's uniform,
but without decorations or orders of any kind.
Barra rose at his entrance and remained standing.
"Pray sit down," said the prince to him, "and proceed with your
conversation with these gentlemen of your country."
"I was about," said Barra, deferentially, "to commit to prison this
soldier of the Douglas Dragoon regiment for a most insolent slander
concerning myself, and also for collecting information as to the
condition of our forces with intent to communicate it to the enemy.
There is, indeed, an officer of the King of France with the man at
this very moment, but in disguise."
The prince turned his bright keen eyes upon Wat and Scarlett in turn.
"And you, sir! what have you to say?" he asked, quietly.
Whereupon, nothing daunted, Wat told his plain tale, and showed the
order which he had received from Sergeant Davie Dunbar, signed with
Barra's name.
"I never wrote the order, and never heard of it," said Barra, who
stood, calmly contemptuous, at the prince's elbow.
"Call Sergeant David Dunbar!" ordered the prince.
It was a few minutes before that stanch soldier arrived. In the mean
time, the prince turned his attention to Scarlett.
"You are an officer of the King of France?" he said, with an ominous
gleam in his eye as he spoke of his arch-enemy.
"I had that honor," replied Scarlett, "till early this morning, when it
was my fortune to help this ancient friend of mine out of a difficulty
into which I had led him. Moreover, being a gentleman, I could not
remain in such a service nor serve with subordinates who knew not the
sacredness of a soldier's pledge. I am, therefore, once more a free
man, and my sword is at the disposal of any honorable prince who will
accept of it."
"You were a celebrated master-of-arms in Scotland, were you not?" asked
the prince.
"If your highness is good enough to say so," said Scarlett, bowing.
"And also in France, the first in estimation in the army of the Prince
of Condé."
"And you understand the drilling and mustering of raw levies?" asked
the Prince of Orange, with some eagerness in his tone.
"There are a dozen regiments in the French service at this moment
who are exceedingly well aware of that, your highness," replied John
Scarlett, with a somewhat peculiar smile.
"Come to me this day week at the camp," said the prince, abruptly,
after remaining a moment in deep thought.
"Sergeant David Dunbar!" announced an officer of the prince's retinue.
And in a moment that sturdy Scot stood before the stadtholder
exceedingly flustered by his sudden summons, and cudgelling his brains
to think why he should be sent for so early in the day by his general.
"You took an order the night before last to this gentleman's quarters?"
said the prince. "From whom did you receive that order, and what speed
did you make with your mission?"
"I received the letter from one whom I knew as a servant of my Lord of
Barra--one Haxo, a butcher in the camp. 'Make haste,' he bade me, 'this
is from my lord to the Scot who dwells in the street of Zaandpoort,
the dragoon called Walter Gordon of Lochinvar, serving in Douglas's
regiment.' So I went there willingly enough, and eke with speed, the
more by token that I knew Wat Gordon and his cousin well, as also Will
Gordon's wife, who is a wise, sober-like lass of Galloway, and can cook
most excellent suppers."
"That will serve, sergeant," said William of Orange. "There is some
mistake or double-dealing here which I shall doubtless discover in good
time. Come to me both together at the camp this day week at the hour of
noon, and I will have further conference with you in my tent. You are
at liberty to join your regiment, and take your friend with you."
Thereupon Walter went to the prince, and, bending on his knee,
presented him with the despatches which, in the inn of Brederode, he
had guarded with his life.
The prince took them without a word of thanks or commendation, and
thrust them into the breast of his coat as carelessly as though they
had been so much waste paper.
For the soldier-prince, who had never known fear in his life, took
courage in others as a matter of course.
And so my Lord Barra was left alone in the office of the
provost-marshal, looking blackly across his table after Wat and
Scarlett as they followed the prince from the room.
CHAPTER VII
MISTRESS MAISIE LENNOX, DIPLOMATIST
When they reached the outer air, Wat drew a long breath. He was still
alive and still a soldier of the States-General, and now at last he had
a whole week's time to think uninterruptedly of Kate. But first of all
he must see her. He was for starting off in the direction of Zaandpoort
Street, but the thoughts of his companion were thirsty thoughts.
"I declare," he cried, "my throat is parched like an Edinburgh
ash-backet on these accursed roads. Let us go to a change-house and
slake our thrapples with a draught of Hollands and water. 'Tis the poor
best that the country affords."
But Wat had other things than Hollands in his mind--the distracting
ripple of Kate's hair, and the way she had of holding the fingers of
one hand on her side when she stood for a moment pensive.
He searched in his belt for a silver thaler, and gave it to Scarlett.
"Go drink, and meet me at the camp to-morrow," he said. Then he
strode away towards the street of Zaandpoort, leaving his companion
alternately looking at the broad unclipped silver piece in his hand,
and staring after him in astonishment.
"The young fool is either mad or in love," confided Scarlett to the
world at large; "but he has not forgotten how to draw a good blade--so
he cannot be so very deeply in love as yet!"
Wat started out boldly and bravely enough, but so soon as he reached
the lilac-bushes which were planted at the foot of the dam of
Zaandpoort he began to feel his shyness returning trebly upon him.
He had not been afraid during the night when he stood surrounded by
assassins and enemies. Joyously and lightheartedly he had crossed
swords with the greatest master-of-arms in Europe. But now, when he
was at the foot of a little wooden stairway, the thought of a simple,
slim-figured girl at the top of it caused the hot blood to tingle in
his cheek, and little helpless pulses to throb and sting in his palms.
Gladly would he have turned and fled. His hands had grown suddenly
great and dirty. His military coat appeared so frayed and draggled with
the night dews and the accidents of the way that he dared not venture
in such a guise into the presence of the lady of his dreams.
But it chanced that Will Gordon, his cousin, had been shaving at a
small mirror which he had set against a twisted chimney-stack on the
roof, both because it was a fine morning and because in the lodging in
the street of Zaandpoort the chambers were small.
"Welcome back, Wat!" he cried, craning his neck over the parapet, and
wiping the soap from the razor upon the high stone coping. "Went your
night-ride to rights?"
"It went most mightily to wrongs!" cried Wat, as cheerfully.
"Nevertheless, in spite of it you are here, safe and sound. Come up,
man, therefore, and tell us the tale. My little lass will doubtless
have something fragrant for breakfast in a moment."
Whereupon he cried lustily down to Maisie, his wife, who was at the pan
in the kitchen: "Put on a full platterful more. Here is our adventurer
returned with a torn coat, a piteous tale, and a right hungry stomach!"
There was clearly no escape now, so Wat, with his heart in his boots,
strode as manfully as he could up the stair which he had been wont to
climb but a day or two before with such complete and careless lack of
thought.
When he opened the outer door, a cheerful smell of morning cookery took
him gratefully by the nostrils, for the long ride and brisk adventure
had quickened his appetite.
"Hither, cousin mine!" cried a light and pleasant voice from the
kitchen.
"And welcome home again!" Maisie added, as he appeared in the doorway.
She had both her hands busy with eggs and flour about the cooking-pan.
"I cannot shake hands with you, Wat," she said, "but to spite William I
will give you a nice kiss."
And she came straight to him where he stood balancing himself
uncertainly just within the threshold. Wat hesitated for the smallest
part of a second.
"Do it quickly, or the eggs will be spoiled," she said, standing on
tiptoe with her floury hands behind her.
"A kiss is worse spoiled by haste than ever an egg can be," said Wat,
as with the kindly pressure of her lips his words and his confidence
began to come back to him.
At his first entering in he had seen Kate stand at the other side of
the fire from Maisie, but now he looked in vain for her. Yet she had
not left the room. Only at the first word of kissing she had entrenched
herself behind a great oaken settle and on the farther side of a wide
Dutch table, where, with her head bent upon an earthenware bowl, she
began to prepare a salad with the most absolute attention and studious
care.
Having kissed Maisie most dutifully, Wat went forward to offer his hand
to Kate. She gave hers to him quickly, and yet, as it seemed to him,
reluctantly also. Instinctively she kept a chair between them as she
did so.
"See, it is all over with oil and chopped lettuce," she said, looking
plaintively at her hand, as though Wat had been personally responsible
for the defilement.
Maisie was at the farther end of the room, bending over her saucepans.
Wat leaned quickly across the table to Kate.
"Are you glad I have come back?" he asked, in a low voice.
"You had a fine morning for your ride," she replied, looking down
at the salad and mixing the ingredients with the most scrupulous
exactitude.
Wat straightened himself instantaneously as if on parade, and stalked
with much dignity to the end of the room at which Maisie was still busy.
And this caused him to miss a singular look which Kate cast after
him, a look of mingled pity and entreaty, wholly wasted on the square
shoulders and erect head, but from which, had Wat caught it, he might
have learned that though it may sometimes be well to appear proud with
a girl, nevertheless, if you love her, not too soon and not too often.
Presently Will Gordon came bustling down to breakfast, having cleaned
his accoutrements and adorned himself with such sober trappings as
were permitted by the Spartan taste of the Covenanting regiment.
Will had still that noisily cheerful self-consciousness which always
characterizes the very young husband doing the unaccustomed honors of
his house.
"Sit down and be welcome, Wat, lad," he cried, "and tell us all the
tale of your journeying."
And so at the table which Maisie had covered with plain coarse Dutch
linen, very unlike the fine cloths which she had left behind her
in Scotland, the four sat down. It was a heartsome meal, and after
a little while Lochinvar began to tell his tale, giving himself
little honor, making nothing of the danger, and dwelling much on the
ridiculous aspect of Haxo the Bull, his ill-favored Calf, and his
bald-headed Killer.
As the tale proceeded Will kept up a constant fire of interjections,
such as "That was well thought on!" "Bravely! my lad!" and "Well done,
Glenkens!" But presently Maisie left her seat, and came round to sit
beside Wat as he began to tell of entering alone at midnight into the
dark house of Brederode with the unknown danger before and the three
traitors behind. All the time Kate sat still, saying nothing and eating
nothing, her lips a little open and tremulous, and her dark eyes
shining with a light in them like a sunbeam in the still water of a sea
cave.
And when it came to the telling of the combat, and the little chance of
life that he had, it so fared that Wat raised his eyes to Kate's, and
lo! tears were running silently down her face and falling unregarded on
her white gown.
In a moment more she had risen and left the table, slipping like a
gleam of light into the next room.
Maisie looked up with much astonishment as she caught the waft of the
girl's gown.
"Why, Kate!" she exclaimed, and without another word sped after her.
When she reached the little room where Kate slept, she found the girl
standing by the window, leaning her head against the thin curtain. She
kept her back to her friend, and did not turn round at her entrance.
Maisie carefully closed the door and went up quickly to Kate. Silently
she put her arm about the slim and supple waist.
"I--I am not crying--I am not indeed!" said Kate, a little indignantly,
putting her hand on her friend's wrist as if to push it away.
"No--no, of course you are not," said Maisie, making (to say the least
of it) an affirmation the truth of which was not wholly obvious. For
the girl's tears dropped steadily upon her white gown, a great one even
falling warm upon Maisie's hand at her waist, while all her slender
body was shaken with sobs.
"It was only--" Kate began, and then stopped.
Maisie sighed as she sat down on the white bed, which, as was its
occupant's custom, had been made up with military precision quite an
hour before. She drew Kate down beside her gently till the girl's head
rested on her shoulders.
"There, there, my lamb," she whispered, soothingly, when at last Kate
found what most she wanted--a soft and comfortably sympathetic surface
to cry upon. Maisie's hand passed lightly over the shapely head with
its straying and enticing thatch of dark love-locks, and her voice
crooned and cooed over her friend like a dove over its mate in the
nest. Then for a long time she continued to hush the girl in her arms,
as if she had been but a little ailing child.
Once there came the sound of a foot heavily masculine in the passage,
and a hand was laid on the latch. Kate made a motion to rise and dry
her face, but Maisie's arms held her tight.
"Go away, William! Go away at once!" she cried, with instant change of
tone, her voice ringing out in such imperious fashion that Will Gordon,
her husband, fled back to the sitting-room, feeling that he had just
saved himself on the brink of some absolutely fatal mistake.
Yet all the while Maisie offered her friend not a word of sympathy,
only the comforting of silent understanding, the touch of loving lips
and hands, and the pressure of loving arms. Kate (she said to herself)
would tell her what she wished at her own time. Maisie had a woman's
tact and did not press for an explanation of a girl's wayward moods, as
even the wisest of men would have done on such an occasion.
"Oh, he might have been killed," at last Kate's words came in a rushing
whisper, as she lifted her face a little higher on Maisie's shoulder.
"And I had sent him away so cruelly. And when he came back I never
told him that I was glad to see him, Maisie. I snatched away my hand."
She added the last words as if that indefensible action had only
crowned a long series of enormities.
"Well," answered her friend, smiling very lovingly down at her, "he is
not gone yet. Come back and say it now. I dare say he will forgive you,
if you look at him like that."
But Kate only sadly shook her head, a little reproachfully that such
a revolutionary proposal should come from one of Maisie's pretended
sympathy and understanding.
"How can I go back?" she said, hopelessly. "They _saw_ me crying, and
they would sit and look at me all the time--like--like--" (and Kate
paused while she searched the universe for a comparison to express the
most utter and abject stupidity) "well, just like men."
Yet she sighed and turned her face a little more inward towards
Maisie's shoulder. "No, decidedly," she said, as if after all she had
been considering the question; "I cannot go back."
Maisie loosened her arms from about Kate's neck. "Then you shall not,
sweeting," she said, with determination, as if a coercive army had been
at hand; "lie you still there and I will get them away. Trust me, they
shall know no more than it is good for men to know."
And she nodded her head to express the limited capacity of mankind,
and the absolute necessity that there was for the wiser portion of the
race to maintain them in a condition of strictly defined and diplomatic
ignorance.
Before she went out of the bedroom Maisie set by the girl's side a
small bottle of the sweet-scented water of Cologne, one which Wat
himself had brought back from his last campaign. "He carried that
nearly a year in his haversack," Maisie said, irrelevantly, as she set
the vial within reach of Kate's hand. "I will go send him to take a
bath. He must have ridden both hard and fast to be back from Brederode
by six o'clock in the morning."
"You will not tell them," whispered the girl, faintly, catching at
Maisie's hand as she went out, "nor let him think that I am--foolish?"
"Trust to me," said Maisie Lennox, nodding her head and smiling
serenely back as she went out.
In the sitting-chamber she found the two young men still at the table
talking together. They stopped with badly assumed masculine ease as
she entered. Since Will's rebuff at the chamber door they had sat
conversing in perfunctory and uncomfortable sentences, their ears
directed towards the door like those of a dog that hears an unkenned
foot on the stair, their attention anywhere but upon the subject
concerning which they were speaking.
Maisie began at once in the hushed and important tone of the messenger
fresh from the seat of war. "Kate could not sleep last night for the
noise of the wooden sabots upon the street outside. She has had a
headache all this morning, and I ought not to have let her listen to
Wat's tale of horrors--"
"I trust I did not--" Wat began, suddenly conscience-stricken.
"No, no," said Maisie, motioning him to sit down, "it was all my fault,
not yours at all--I should have bethought me in time. She will be quite
well after she has slept. Be sure you remember to walk quietly with
your great boots," she added, looking viciously at her husband.
At this hint Wat rose to go. In doing so he accidentally pushed his
stiff wooden chair back from the table with a loud creak, and then
abjectly recoiled from Maisie's face of absolute horror.
He sat down again disconsolately. Will Gordon and he cast a pathetic
look at each other. Their place was obviously not here. So one after
the other they bent and pulled off their heavy foot-gear, while Maisie
watched them with uplifted finger of the most solemnizing caution. Then
very softly the two men stole down the stairs, carrying their boots in
their hands.
Maisie listened till they were fairly out of the house. Then she went
directly to Kate's door. She opened it and set her head within. There
was an expression of almost heavenly peace and serenity upon her face.
The consciousness of infinite well-doing dwelt upon it.
"It is all right!" she said, "they will never so much as guess why.
They went out like lambs--carrying their boots under their arms!" And
again Maisie nodded her head with smiling encouragement.
And yet diplomatists are usually selected from among men.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STREET OF THE BUTCHERY
It was still quite early one crisp morning when Kate McGhie set out
to do her marketing. Ever since the first few days after her arrival
in the city of Amersfort, she had been intrusted with this duty--both
because she desired to do something to help her friend and gossip
Maisie with her household cares, and also because, being a laird's
daughter, she was more learned in the accomplishments of foreign
tongues than the daughter of Anton Lennox of the Duchrae.
The sun shone on her face and touched lovingly the small straying
curls of her hair, as Kate stood at the outer door of the lodgings
in Zaandpoort Street. She was drawing on a pair of gloves which made
a difficulty about the matter, and needed to be repeatedly coaxed
with that adorable pout which Wat loved. She was clad from head to
foot in doublet and pleated skirt of gray Scots cloth, woven both of
them by that very worthy man and elder in the Kirk, William Edgar of
Rhonehouse. She wore also a flat, broad bonnet; and the ribbon of the
blue snood, which, in token of maidenhood, bound her hair, was tied in
a dainty love-knot behind her ear.
The rebellious gloves were a pair of Spanish gauntlets of untanned
leather, and she was calculating what she could buy for the silver
florin, which comprised all the united resources of the Zaandpoort
establishment for the day. She allowed the slightest sigh to escape
her of regret for the easier finances of Balmaghie, where neither her
father nor she herself ever knew aught of the providing till the dishes
were on the table, so completely did the ancient house-keeper of Roger
McGhie keep the matter in her own responsible but exceedingly jealous
hands.
"This experience of marketing will teach you many things you do not
know," said Maisie, the newly married wife, darkly. "It would indeed be
a pretty pass if when you came to be married you did not know a leg of
beef from a shoulder of mutton."
Yet, in spite of Maisie's words, there was no great chance, in the
ordering of the domestic economy of Zaandpoort Street, of getting
first-hand information upon the subject of such expensive and
formidable dainties as these.
For the pay of a gentleman-private in the Covenanter's regiment did not
allow of extragavances, even when it was supplemented by certain small
sums brought safely over from Scotland by the hand and favor of more
recent exiles.
But Kate McGhie had not come to live upon Will and Maisie as a
dependant. She would be, she declared to her hostess, neither sorner
nor idler; for she had brought with her certain moneys of her own, and
her father in Scotland had promised to send her more at such times
as he got the chance of a douce Scottish merchant coming to the Low
Countries in search of Dutch tobacco and Flemish cloth.
It was, therefore, with the light, free step of one who is a partner
in the concern that Kate took her way towards the market-place of
Amersfort. She carried a small white wicker-basket over her right arm,
and in her left hand she held the skirt of her kirtle as she went
alertly stepping over the puddles and gutters in the streets, and
even overleaping the backs of sundry slumbering dogs with a quick
and dainty disdain which became her well. The soldier lads hurrying
by with despatches turned their heads to watch her as she passed; and
the brisk merchant 'prentices, going to their counting-houses at six
in the morning (as was the custom of the time and place), risked their
master's reprimand to stand awhile and gaze as she tripped out of
sight, careless in her maiden freedom alike of the gold braid of the
officer and the broadcloth of the merchant.
At last Kate arrived in the wide square, into which looked down the
hundred windows of the historical townhall of Amersfort, one of the
most famous in Netherlandish history. She at once penetrated fearlessly
into that babel of discord, and, disregarding the proffered attentions
of the first noisy stall-keepers, she swept past them and threaded her
way steadily to the favored and regular recipients of her custom, who
by honest dealing and courtesy had already established their right to
her confidence.
Pretty enough it was to see the practical intentness with which she
examined the portions of meat and bundles of vegetables submitted to
her judgment. How sagely and charmingly, and eke with what an air
of wisdom, did she not listen to these voluble explanations, one
word in ten of which she might possibly understand. Then, holding up
three or four slender white fingers, she would indicate the number of
infinitesimal copper coins which she was willing to pay for the article.
Whereat the vendor would laugh, and reject the offer with a sadly
resigned air, as much as to say that doubtless such a noble young lady
must needs have her jest with a poor man. And when, in her turn, Kate
would smile sweetly and persistently, or even as a last resort pretend
to go on to another stall, then presently and swiftly the bargain
would be completed upon her own terms, and to the ample profit and
satisfaction of the merchant.
Thus drawing all eyes upon her as she went by, trim and dainty from
head to foot, graceful from the proud setting of her head on the
swan-like neck to the turn of the slender ankle, this tall young
Scots maid passed, light-foot, heart-whole, and fearless, through the
discursive clamor of the market-place. Verily, a most pleasant sight
for the eyes of men and women to behold.
And amongst others, my Lord of Barra watched her this day, not by any
means for the first time. For though he had left his bed betimes and
come down to the market-place of the city, ostensibly in order to
observe the mood of the turbulent and often rebellious town--in reality
he had left the palace solely for the purpose of watching for the
slight form and swiftly gracious carriage which pertained to the latest
arrival among the exiles from his own country. Nevertheless, he did
not try to speak to her. Murdo of Barra had wisdom enough to wait till
by chance or stratagem he could compass an effective entrance upon the
stage of her life. On the very first day of her sojourn in Amersfort
he had taken the trouble to find out all that was known about her
among the Scottish refugees. And without any great difficulty he had
discovered a man from Galloway who had informed him how that this maid
was not only the sole heiress to the broad acres of Balmaghie, but also
a true-blue daughter of the Covenants, and one who had quarrelled with
her father and all her kin for the sake of the banner of the Bible and
the Sword.
Barra shrugged his shoulders.
"For such a lip and such a waist the king himself might venture to
subscribe as many covenants as there are, and yet cry out for more!"
So it came to pass that, as often as Kate McGhie visited the morning
bustle of the thronging market-place of Amersfort, so often there could
be seen on the skirts of the crowd a tall, dark man in a close-fitting
suit of black velvet, with ribbon-bows of the new flat shape at the
knees, and the orange-colored hose and cloak of the prince's household.
He seemed mainly to be watching the delivering of the customs-dues by
the incoming merchants, but also to be keeping a wary eye upon the
chaffering crowd in the interests of law and order, as indeed became a
provost-marshal.
But, in spite of all, his eye never for a moment lost sight of the
slim, graceful figure, nor of the gray cap and eagle's feather which
told of another country and a warmer blood than that which flowed so
placidly in the veins of the honest burghers' wives who did their
serenely contentious marketing at Kate McGhie's elbow.
It was nigh upon the stroke of seven when the girl emerged with
heightened color and quickened breath at the far end of the
market-place. Her basket had grown heavy upon her rounds, and the long,
green purse was weighty now with copper coin, instead of holding a
single knob of silver at one end.
Straight in front of Kate lay an alley which promised to conduct her by
a nearer way to the shaded canal bank, from which diverged the street
of Zaandpoort, where already Maisie would be waiting for her return
with the daily stores.
Kate struck fearlessly into the opening. It was a narrow and steep lane
which led abruptly upward from the market-place. The houses, with their
beetle-browed swallow-nests' balconies, almost met overhead, while the
lower stories were taken up with crowded booths containing the humblest
merchandise. Dirty children swarmed in the gutters. Fierce, battered,
scowling faces of men looked out of sullen doorways, and scarred and
disfigured women showed their heads, fiercely or inquiringly, at the
rag-stuffed holes which served for windows.
At a curious elbow in this street of the Butchery (as was its
well-befitting name) Kate paused, startled a little at her strange
surroundings. She looked anxiously about her. The girl had never been
in this part of the town before, and she began to wish that she had
taken her usual circuitous route homeward by the main streets and the
canal bank.
But even while she looked uncertainly about, several fellows of the
baser sort disengaged themselves from various low doorways and strolled
towards her. Instantly Kate gripped the handle of her basket a little
tighter, and, keeping well in the middle of the street, endeavored to
pass the men by with great unconcern.
The first pair, who were indeed none other than our friends of the
inn of Brederode, the Calf and the Killer, divided to let her pass.
And Kate, having swept between them with her head high, found herself
almost in the arms of Haxo the Bull, who held his hands wide to
intercept her, laughing the while, as though she had been a poor beast
that wished to escape from his shambles.
"Gently, my pretty one," he said, cocking his scarred and brutal head
to the side to look at her, "'tis not so often that we have such
dainty, high-stepping maids come to visit us here in the Street of the
Butchery; and when they do, it is the custom of the country that they
pay toll ere they depart."
And he would have laid a heavy hand on her shoulder; but Kate started
back so quickly and fiercely that Haxo thought that she was about to
draw a weapon upon him. With a well-executed feint she pretended to
pass him on the right hand, then, light as a swallow, she made a dart
past on his left, and, lifting her kirtle wellnigh to her knee, she ran
swiftly up the street. But from a dark alley in front two other men
emerged and intercepted her, while from behind Haxo and his myrmidons
closed in upon her, running with all their might.
Seeing that it was impossible for her to escape by flight, Kate
set down her basket at her feet and drew forth the keen little
hunting-knife which she always wore in her garter. Then she set her
back to the nearest wall, and resolved that it should go ill with the
first who dared to lay a hand upon her.
"Fairly and softly, beauty," cried Haxo, insinuatingly, as he came
up panting, "we mean you no harm, lady. But you must know that it is
the custom of the Street of the Butchery that every stranger must pay
toll to us. And for you the toll is of the sweetest, and will cost
you naught but what you have plenty store of. I' faith! when did the
tasting of such lips as yours do harm to any man!"
And Haxo's smile as he spoke became an entire infernal epic.
He drew cautiously closer, and as he brought his hideous, greasy face,
stamped with all pollution, nearer to hers, Kate drew back her hand
ready to strike at him desperately with the knife. But as she did so,
the snaky hand of the Killer grasped her wrist like a vise, while the
Calf leaned over her shoulder and with his right hand took away the
weapon. Kate was left completely at their mercy.
"Help! Help!" she shouted, desperately, and the cry of pity and appeal
rang vainly up and down the street. A few of the battered drabs of
women leaned listlessly out of the windows, scarcely amused by the
horse-play of Haxo and his companions. They saw so many much more
terrible things every night and day in the Street of the Butchery.
CHAPTER IX
MY LORD OF BARRA
"Help! Help! For God's sake, help!" again cried Kate. And the
lamentable cry was at once a prayer to God and an appeal to man.
Very pitiful her voice sounded, and she thought, "Oh, if Wat Gordon
were only here, I should not have been treated so!" Alas! it was the
more unfortunate for both that Wat at that moment stood on guard at the
city entrance of the camp of Amersfort.
But just as Haxo put his arm about her waist, a loud, clear voice
higher up the street cried with authority, "Hold, rascals, what would
you with the lady?"
"That is no business of yours!" instantly replied one of the men who
had come up last.
Kate looked up hopefully. She saw at the corner of the street a tall,
soldierly man clad in black velvet and wearing an orange cloak,
evidently an officer of the prince's household. He had his sword bare
in his hand, and seeing her manifest distress, he ran towards her
eagerly, his shoulder-ribbons waving as he came.
[Illustration: "THE GENTLEMAN INSTANTLY ATTACKED THEM FURIOUSLY"]
The fellows about her shrank back and drew their short sailors'
"whingers." But the gentleman instantly attacked them furiously with
his long sword, for Haxo and his companions had fled at the first sound
of Barra's voice, while the two who had arrived later were engaging
Kate's deliverer. Their short swords, however, were no match for the
officer's cavalry blade. The weapon of one presently clattered upon the
pavement while his comrade ran off down an alley, holding his side
as if he had been wounded.
Then, putting his left arm firmly about her, and holding his sword bare
in the other, Kate's rescuer urged her to mount quickly up the street.
"They may return," he said; "they may bring others with them, my lady,
in which case I might not be able to protect you, or even to serve you
otherwise than by dying for you, which very gladly I would do."
Now Kate desired much to walk by herself, finding the arm about her
waist discomposing, and having also the market-basket to carry; but
it seemed at the time a thing impossible to say to a man who had just
saved her life--or, at the least, had preserved her from the hands of
many cruel ruffians.
In this manner they reached in safety the wider spaces of the upper
streets, where Kate gladly saw the town's officers marching hither and
thither with their halberds ported and their pistols in their belts.
Then she disengaged herself deftly from her protector's circling arm.
"I thank you, sir," she said, very gratefully, "for your so great and
timely kindness to me. I shall never forget it; nor yet will my father,
whose name is Roger McGhie of Balmaghie, in the country of Scotland,
ever forget your gentle courtesy to his daughter in the land of her
exile."
The stranger doffed his bonnet and bowed low.
"I also am of your nation, fair mistress," said he. "In my own country
I am called Murdo, Lord of Barra and the Small Isles; but now it is
mine honor alone that is great, for I also am an exile for truth's
sake, and must serve a foreign master, as you see."
And he touched with a certain noble humility his orange cloak and the
prince's badge and motto that were upon it.
Kate bowed in turn, and her eyes expressed a warmer interest than she
had yet shown.
"My Lord of Barra," she said, "I have heard of you and of your
distinguished services and position. I am the more grateful to one so
noble for protecting a poor maid and an exile from insult."
"It is my privilege and my very great good fortune," said he, again
lifting his hat with more than ordinary deference. "Let us walk
together to your home; you lodge with your cousin of Earlstoun, do you
not?"
"Yes; but how may my Lord Barra know of that?" said Kate, in some
bewilderment.
Her companion smiled complacently.
"Though I be but an exile, yet, by the prince's special favor, I am set
in charge of the good behavior of this turbulent city, wherein it is my
duty to know everything. This morning it chanced that I was on a tour
of inspection in the worst and most dangerous parts, when it was my hap
to be able to render you a very slight service."
Barra called a porter and bade him carry Kate's basket and walk
behind them; but this that proud lass would not allow, whereupon the
provost-marshal dismissed the man with a movement of his hand. And so
in earnest talk the pair approached the entering in of the street of
Zaandpoort.
It so happened that Wat Gordon, released from his duty in the camp, had
hastened homeward as fast as he could, hoping that he might be in time
to help Kate with the preparation of the vegetables, and in especial
with the salad; for it had become his utmost pleasure to do for her the
most common and menial offices. As he arrived at the end of the street
he saw Kate coming towards him, apparently lost in friendly intercourse
with a tall officer of the prince's household. He stood transfixed.
Presently she paused at the door and, looking across, she saw him.
"Wat!" she cried, eagerly, "come hither!"
For she wished to tell him of her adventure.
But facing about and standing straight as an arrow, Walter Gordon
(being an exceedingly foolish person) saluted the officer in the orange
cloak and marched past as though he had not heard. Whereat Kate,
mightily offended at his rudeness, asked my Lord of Barra to do her
friend Mistress Maisie Gordon and herself the honor of entering their
poor rooms.
"For it is not needful that those who are of the same country and cause
should stand on punctilios."
So because of the pride of this stiff-necked Wat, my Lord of Barra
found footing in the street of Zaandpoort; for pride ofttimes breeds
more and worse things than many sins called deadlier.
* * * * *
Before Scarlett and Wat issued forth from the presence of the prince
on the day appointed for the interview, Wat had received a commission
in his own regiment, while Scarlett was nominated instructor to the
newly formed companies of exiles, called first Buchan's and afterwards
Egerton's Foot.
In addition to all this, Wat had not forgotten to represent to the
prince the case of his cousin Will, and had reminded him of the great
services he had rendered the cause in Scotland; to which William of
Orange had listened with seeming pleasure, but with regard to Will
Gordon's promotion in the corps of the Covenant he had made no promises.
It was, nevertheless, with a proud and happy heart that Wat returned
to his cousin's lodgings in the street of Zaandpoort. He had seen the
prince and found him well disposed. Even his enemy Barra had been able
to do nothing against him, and if their feet were already climbing the
lower rungs of the ladder of fortune, he felt that in some measure it
was owing to his courage and address.
All that day Wat's heart kept time to a new and unwonted tune. The
streets had never seemed so smiling, the faces of the children never so
mirthful. The commonwealth of things was manifestly in excellent repair
that afternoon in the city of Amersfort. Lochinvar hummed a jaunty
marching-stave as he strode towards the low door in Zaandpoort Street,
while his heart beat fast to think that in a moment more he would be
looking into those wondrous eyes whose kindness or cruelty had now
become to him as life or death.
As he went a little softly up the stairs, he heard above a noise of
cheerful converse. An unknown man's voice spoke high and clear among
the others. The lighter tones of women intermingled with it, pleasantly
responsive. For a moment those within did not in the instancy of
their discourse hear Wat's summons. At last Maisie opened the door,
astonished that any one should knock at inner chamber-port, and as Wat
entered he saw, sitting in his own accustomed place, his hat on the
table, his sword unslung for ease, his enemy the Lord of Barra. The
provost-marshal was talking easily and familiarly to Kate, who sat on
the low window-seat leaning a little forward, with interest written
clearly on every line of her face. She was nursing her knee between her
clasped palms with that quaint and subtle grace which had often gone
to Wat's heart. Her dark eyes rested, not upon his incoming, of which
she appeared to be for the moment unconscious, but upon the face of the
speaker.
Wat and Barra submitted (it could not be called more) to Maisie's
introduction--Wat with sullen blackness of countenance and the
slightest inclination of his head, Barra with smiling patience, as
though by the very irony of circumstances it had chanced to him to be
introduced to his stable-boy.
Kate rose and took Wat's hand a moment in kindly fashion, though with
eyes a little downcast, being not yet ready quite to forget his
rudeness upon the street. But immediately she went back to her seat in
order to listen to the conclusion of the story which Barra had been
relating. It concerned the loyalty of the Highland clans to their
chiefs, and as Barra told of their sacrifices, a genuine pleasure
lightened in his dark face, his eyes glittered, and a new life breathed
through his whole form. For pride in the loyalty of his clan was the
selfish man's one enthusiasm.
Maisie sat down with her sewing close to where Wat stood moping and
bending his brows, and, noting his brow of constraint and gloom, she
set herself lovingly to cheer him.
"We have had good news to-day," she said, smiling pleasantly at
him--"news that William does not know yet. See!" she added, handing
him a parchment from the table with heightened color, for she had been
married but six months, and her William was the pivot on which the
universe revolved.
It was a commission as captain in the Covenant regiment in favor of
William Gordon, called younger, of Earlstoun. Wat continued to look at
it in amazement. It was what he had asked for from William of Orange
that day without obtaining an answer.
"My Lord of Barra had it from the prince's own hand. He says that the
stadtholder has long marked the address of my husband, and hath only
delayed to reward it lest the short space he has been with the colors
should arouse the jealousy of his comrades."
A spark of fury burned up suddenly in Wat's eyes.
"Is the paper genuine, think you?" he asked, loudly enough for all to
hear.
Maisie looked up quickly, astonished, not so much at his words as by
the fierce, abrupt manner of his speech.
"Genuine!" she said, in astonishment. "Why, my Lord Barra brought it
himself. It is signed by his own hand and issued in the name of the
prince. Why do you ask if it be genuine?"
"I ask," cried Lochinvar, in the same fiercely offensive tone, "because
the only document which I have ever seen bearing that signature and
issued in the name of the prince was a forgery, and as such was
repudiated two days later by my Lord of Barra."
The words rang clearly and unmistakably through the room. Doubtless
Barra heard them, and Kate also, for a deep flush of annoyance mounted
slowly to her neck, touched with rose the ivory of her cheek, and faded
out again, leaving her with more than her former paleness. But Barra
never stopped a moment in the full, easy current of his narration.
He continued to let fall his sentences with precisely the same cool,
untroubled deliberation, fingering meanwhile the prince's signet-ring,
which he habitually wore on his hand. Kate almost involuntarily moved a
little nearer to him and fixed her eyes the more earnestly on his face,
because she felt that Wat's words were a deliberate insult intended for
her deliverer of the preceding day.
Wat on his part pushed his chair noisily back from the table, and
rapped nervously and defiantly with his knuckles on the board.
"There is not a man in my wild western isles," Barra's voice was heard
going on, evenly and calmly, "who would not die for his chief, giving
his life as readily as a platter of drammoch--not a poor unlearned
cotter who would not send his family to the death to save the honor of
the clan from the least stain, or the life of the chief from any shadow
of danger. The true clansman can do anything for his chief--"
"Except tell the truth," burst in Walter Gordon, fiercely.
Barra paused a moment and looked calmly at the interrupter. Then,
turning a little more squarely to Kate and his hostess, he continued
his speech without betraying the least annoyance.
"He will do anything for his chief which does not involve the loss of
his honor and his standing in the clan."
"Does this your noble Highland honor include treachery, spying, and
butchery?" cried Wat, now speaking directly to his enemy.
"It includes good manners in a lady's presence, sir," said Barra,
calmly.
"Do these your clansmen of honor and courtesy wear butchers' knifes in
their belts, and go by the name of Haxo the Bull, the Calf, and the
Killer?"
Barra spread his hands abroad with a French gesture of helplessness
which was natural to him, and which expressed his inability to
comprehend the vagaries and fancies of a person clearly out of his
mind. Then, without betraying the least annoyance, he turned suavely to
Kate, and began to tell her of the new ambassadors from Austria who,
with a great retinue, had that day arrived at the court of the Prince
of Orange.
Wat rose with his hand on his sword. "Cousin Maisie," he said, "I am
not a man of politic tricks nor specious concealments. I give you fair
warning that I know this man. I tell him to his face that I denounce
him for a traitor, a conspirator, a murderer. I find Murdo of Barra a
guest in this house, and I do what I can to protect those I love from
so deadly an acquaintance--the very shadow of whose name is death."
"Protect! You forget, Cousin Walter," returned Maisie, indignantly,
standing up very white and determined--"you forget that I have a
husband who is entirely able to protect me. And you forget also that
this is his house, not yours. Moreover, if you cannot suffer to meet
my friends here as one guest meets another, it is entirely within your
right to go where you will only meet with those of whom you are pleased
to approve."
Here Walter snatched suddenly at the bonnet which had been lying on the
floor: but the indignant little lady of the house in Zaandpoort Street
had not yet said all her say.
"And, moreover," she said, "so long as I am mistress of a hovel,
neither you nor any other shall intrude your brawls and quarrels upon
those whom I choose to invite to my house."
"You choose between us, then?" cried Wat, holding his head high, his
face as colorless as a sheet of paper.
"If you desire to put it so--yes. I choose between a man of courtesy
and a silly, hectoring boy. I choose, cousin mine, not to give you the
right to select my guests for me."
Wat turned to Kate. The blood had now ebbed from his lips, and left
them gray. His eyes seemed in a short tale of moments to have sunk deep
into his face.
"And you?" he said, more calmly than before, looking at the maid of his
love.
The girl trembled like a leaf on an autumn gossamer; nevertheless, she
answered firmly enough: "I am but a guest in this house, but so long as
I abide here the friends of my hostess are my friends!"
Wat Gordon bowed low with stateliest courtesy, first to his cousin
Maisie, then to Kate McGhie, and lastly to his rival.
"I shall have the honor of sending you a communication in the morning,"
he said, looking the councillor of the prince between the eyes.
Barra sat still on his chair, looking Wat over with the same calmly
amused contempt he had shown throughout. "Ah," he replied, nodding his
head, "perhaps it might be as well to let the--the application come in
the usual way--through my chamberlain."
And he was still smiling as Wat Gordon strode down the stairs with
anger burning coldly white on his face, and all hell raging in his
heart.
Barra turned to Kate to continue his story, but her place was vacant.
The girl had inexplicably vanished from the room before Wat's foot had
even passed the threshold. She lay now on the little white bed in her
own room, her whole frame shaken with sobs, and the hot, bitter tears
raining down on the pillow.
Then, for the first time, she knew in her own heart that she was face
to face with great unreasoning love, which could neither be banished
nor disowned.
"Oh, why," she sobbed, "was he so foolish and wicked? Why did Maisie
grow of a sudden so hard and cruel to him? Why must things turn out
thus deadly wrong, when they might just as easily have gone right?"
She buried her face in the pillow, and whispered her conclusion to the
fine linen of its coverture upon which her tears were falling.
"Yet I love him--yes, I love him more than ever for it!" she said, and
sank her head deeper, as if to hide her love from her own most secret
sight.
CHAPTER X
THE DESCENT OF AVERNUS
Wat staggered a little as he walked down the street of Zaandpoort. He
felt somewhat like a bullock that has been felled, yet which for the
moment escapes with life. The air had grown suddenly thin and cold,
as it had been difficult to breathe. He drew his cloak about him and
shivered.
"Well," he raged, "that at least is ended! They have done with me--made
their choice. I that stood by them in many bad, old days am cast off
for a rogue and a scoundrel--because, forsooth, he is an earl and a
prince's councillor. Were I but come to my rights, they would not
treat me thus! But, because I am only poor Wat Gordon of the Douglas
Regiment, I must be grateful for any dog's treatment."
As Wat grew to believe his own silly windy words, he held his head
a little higher. And into the poor, angry, foolish boy's heart the
devil cast his baited hook. Pride took hold of Wat, and the thought of
revenge.
"But, after all, am I not Walter Gordon of Lochinvar," he said, as he
strode along, heeding none, "a gentleman at least, and now, in spite of
them all, an officer also? If mine own folk and kin think nothing of me
in the little lodgings of Zaandpoort Street, I can show them that there
are places more famous, where others will make Wat Gordon welcome for
his own sake."
At that moment a shouting reveller ruffling it along the street
recalled to his mind that he was in the neighborhood of the famous
Hostelry of the Coronation, where nightly during the stay of the
army at Amersfort all the young bloods of the allied forces met, and
where (it was reported) brightest eyes shone across the wine goblet,
and daintiest feet danced upon the polished floors. The Inn of the
Coronation was held by mine host Sheffell. A score of times it had been
closed by the city fathers, but, nevertheless, always with more or less
carefully concealed intent of winking hard at its immediate reopening.
And all this was because the burgomeister and magnates of Amersfort
looked upon the Inn of the Coronation as a safety-valve for the riotous
blades of the city and camp.
"For," said the former to the more sapient of his corporation when
he could be private with them, "if the young kerls go not to the
Coronation and meet with their like--well, we are men and fathers. Like
is it that we may have matters on our hands that shall trouble us more
deeply. Worse were it if the rascals came rattling their spurs and
tagging at the tails of our daughters and our wives."
So the sleep of mine host Sheffell, of the Hostel of the Coronation,
was not disturbed by the fear of the city council.
Towards this famous (or, as it might be, infamous) house, therefore,
Wat turned his steps. Often the men of his regiment had offered to
conduct him thither, but till now Wat had steadfastly refused, with the
laugh which meant that he had to do with metal more attractive. For in
a camp it does not do to obtain a repute for a too ostentatious virtue.
But to-night Wat Gordon buckled his sword a little tighter, belted
his silken orange sash closer about his new officer's coat, swung his
cloak back in a more becoming fashion, twirled his mustache, passed his
fingers lightly through his crisp, fair curls, and strode with jingle
of huge cavalry spurs into the Hostel of the Coronation, through whose
portals (safe it is to say) no more proper or desirable young man had
passed that night.
Great Sheffell himself was on the watch, and greeted the young officer
with profoundest courtesy. Wat vouchsafed him hardly a nod, but marched
straight into a great crowded room, which hummed about him, riant with
gay noise and the spangle of silver and glass.
The main guest-chamber of the Coronation was a long, fairly wide,
white-panelled room, divided at the sides into more private
compartments by curtains hung upon rows of pillars. The more favored
guests sat at small tables in the alcoves, and were waited on by girls
attired in scarlet blouse and short embroidered silk kirtle, whose
dainty hose of orange and black twinkled underneath as they passed
deftly to and fro with glass and platter.
As soon as Wat entered, and began to thread his way through the
laughing press, he found himself greeted from this table and that,
and many were the invitations showered upon him to make one of some
jocund company. But Wat only shook his head smilingly, and made his way
steadily to the head of the room as if he had some appointment to keep
there.
Nevertheless, he sat down listlessly enough at an unoccupied table, and
a pretty maid, in a dress daintier and fresher than that of the other
attendants, instantly stood beside him with her hands clasped modestly
before her.
"I wait my lord's commands," she said, in excellent French.
Without giving the matter any consideration, Wat ordered a bottle
of old Rhenish, and sat back to contemplate the scene at his ease.
Officers of every regiment in the services of the States-General and
of its allies were there, young attachés of the embassies, stray
princelings of the allied German duchies; while scattered among these
were to be seen a parti-colored crowd of ladies with flower-decked
hair, lavish of shoulder, opulent of charm.
Presently the pretty maid brought Wat his bottle of Rhenish, ancient
and cobwebbed. She decanted it carefully, standing close by his
shoulder, so that a subtle suggestion of feminine proximity affected
the young man strangely. She poured out a full measure of the scented
vintage into a huge green glass on which tritons gambolled and
sea-nymphs writhed.
"You have, perchance, no one to drink with you?" she said, giving him a
glance out of her large and lustrous eyes.
"Truly," replied Wat, "I am alone!"
And the sadness of his life seemed to culminate in a kind of mimic and
desperate isolation as he spoke.
"Then," said the girl, "may I not drink first to your beautiful eyes,
my captain, and then, if you will, to our better acquaintance?"
She lifted the glass to her lips, tasted it as a bird does, and
presented it to Walter with the daintiest gesture.
"Your name?" he said, looking at her with a certain tolerant and almost
passive interest.
"I am called 'the Little Marie!'" she smiled; "I have been wellnigh a
week in the Hostel of the Coronation, and not yet have I seen any to
compare with you, my lord captain of the fair locks."
With a certain childish abandon, and a freedom still more than half
innocent, Marie seated herself upon the arm of the great chair into
which Wat had thrown himself upon his entrance. Her dainty foot dangled
over the carven finial, almost touching the ribbons at Walter's knee
with its silver buckled slipper of the mode of Paris. Marie's hand
rested lightly on the small curls at the back of his neck, till Walter
grew vaguely restive under the caressing fingers. Yet because he was in
a great and thronged room humming with company, where none took any
notice of him or his companion, each being intent on playing out his
own game, the uneasy feeling soon passed away.
Only now and again, as the Rhenish sank in the bottle and the hand of
the Little Marie took wider sweeps and paused more caressingly among
his blonde hair, a thought awoke not unpleasantly in Wat's bosom.
"They have cast me out of their home and friendship. They have
preferred a traitor. But I will let them see that there is pleasure in
the world yet."
And his arm went of its own accord about the waist of the Little Marie.
* * * * *
It seemed to be but a moment after (though it might have been an
hour) that Wat looked up. A hush had fallen suddenly upon the briskly
stirring din of the Hostel of the Coronation. Walter's eyes instantly
caught those of a man attired in the uniform of the provost-marshal of
the city. There was a cold smile of triumph on the face which met his.
It was Barra, and he touched with his arm the man who stood beside him.
Wat turned a little to look past the curtain which partly surrounded
his table and alcove, and there, over the wide gauzy sleeves of the
Little Marie, he encountered the grave and reproachful regard of his
cousin, William Gordon of Earlstoun.
Wat started to his feet with a half-formed idea of going forward to
explain something, he knew not what. But ere he had disengaged himself
from the great chair, on the arm of which perched the Little Marie,
an angry thought, born of pride and fostered by the heady antiquity
of the cobwebbed Rhenish, drew him back again into his place. A kind
of desperate defiance chilled him into a blank and sudden calmness,
which boded no good either to himself or to any who should oppose
him. Besides which, the circumstances were certainly difficult of
explanation.
"They cast me out, and then immediately they follow after to spy upon
me. Shall I utter a word of excuse only to be met with the sneer of
unbelief? Am I not an officer of dragoons? Also, am I not of age, and
able to choose my company as well as they? As Wat Gordon never was a
prayer-monger, so neither will he now be a hypocrite."
He glanced not uncomplaisantly at the Little Marie, who hummed a
careless tune and swung her pretty foot against his knee, happily
unconscious of his trouble. Perhaps the Rhenish had taken her back
again to the green slopes about her native village, and to her more
innocent childhood.
"Another bottle of wine," he cried, with a heady kind of half-boyish
defiance.
"But you have not yet finished this," she answered. "Nor, indeed," she
added, with a roguish smile, "even paid for it."
Wat threw a pair of gold pieces on the table.
"One for the wine and one to buy you a new pair of buckled shoes,
Little Marie," he said.
"Then for luck you must drink out of the one I wear," she said, and
forthwith she poured a thimbleful of the wine into the shoe, which she
deftly slipped from the foot which had swung by his ribbon-knot of
blue-and-white.
"Pledge me!" she cried, daring him to a match of folly, and she held
the curious beaker close to his chin. Wat was conscious that his cousin
stood grave and stern by the door, and that on Barra's face there
hovered a strangely satisfied smile. But something angry and hot within
him drove him recklessly deeper and deeper. He had no pleasure in the
thing. It was as apples of Sodom in his mouth, exceeding bitter fruit;
but at least he knew that he was cutting every tie that bound him to
the street of Zaandpoort--to those who had despised and rejected him.
He lifted the shoe of the Little Marie in the air.
"To the owner of the prettiest foot in the world!" he cried, and
pledged her.
Four men who had come in after my Lord of Barra now sat themselves
down at the table nearest to Wat. The Little Marie, having recovered
her slipper and wiped it coquettishly with the tassels of Wat's sash,
somewhat reluctantly went away to bring the second bottle of Rhenish.
During her absence Lochinvar remained behind, blowing with all his
might upon the dying coals of his anger, and telling himself that
he had done nothing worthy of reproach, when suddenly John Scarlett
plumped himself down into the chair opposite him. He had been in the
inn all the time, but only now he had come near Walter Gordon.
"Lochinvar," he said, "'tis a sight for sore eyes to see you here! What
has happened to the Covenant that you have left the prayer-meeting and
come to the Hostel of the Coronation?"
"Jack," cried Wat, "you know me better than that. Never was Walter
Gordon a great lover of the Covenant all the days of his life."
"You ran gayly enough with the hare, then, at any rate!" answered John
Scarlett, provokingly.
"Nay," replied Wat, "I was hunted by the pack, it is true, but that was
because of the dead stroke I gave His Grace the Duke of Wellwood."
"And the beginning of that--was it not some matter of doctrine or of
the kirk?" asked Scarlett, though he knew the truth well enough.
The Rhenish had been mounting to Wat's head, and his heart had grown
gay and boastful.
"Nay," he cried; "very far indeed from that. 'Twas rather a matter of
the favors of my lady the Duchess."
One of the men at the next table looked quickly over at Wat's
words, and, indeed there seemed to be but little talk among them.
Contrariwise, they sat silently drinking their wine, and as it had
been, listening to the talk of Wat Gordon and his companion.
Presently the Little Marie came daintying and smiling back with the
wine, deftly weaving her way among the revellers, and as she went by
the neighboring table one of the men at the side on which she tried to
pass made free to set his arm about her.
"Change about, my lass," he said; "'tis the turn of this table to
have your pretty company. By my faith, they have given us a maid as
plain-visaged as a Gouda cheese."
The Little Marie gave a quick cry, and Wat half started to his feet and
laid his hand upon his sword; but Scarlett dropped a heavy palm upon
his shoulder and forced him back again into his seat. In a moment the
girl had adroitly twisted herself from the clutch of the man, and, in
addition, had left the marks of her nails on his cheek.
"Take that, my rascal," she cried, "and learn that spies have no
dealings with honest maids."
"Good spirit, i' faith!" said Scarlett, nodding his head approvingly;
but the Little Marie, coming to them with heightened color and angry
eyes, did not again set herself on the arm of Wat Gordon's chair.
Instead she drew a high stool to the side of the table, midway between
Wat and Scarlett. Then she placed her arm upon the table-cloth, and
leaned her chin upon the palms of her hands.
"Abide by us," said Walter, who could not bear that so fair and light a
thing should be left to the ill-guided mercies of such a mangy pack as
were drinking at the next table.
The second supply of Rhenish, with the capable assistance of Scarlett,
sank apace in its tall flask, and at each glass Wat's voice mounted
higher and higher. He could be heard all over the room declaiming upon
the merits of Scottish men, offering to defend with his life the virtue
and beauty of Scottish maids, or in case none should be willing to call
these in question, then he was equally ready to draw sword on behalf of
the dignity and incorruptibility of Scottish judges.
The guest-room of the Coronation was for a while disposed to listen
with amused wonder. Presently the four men at the table near Wat
became five. The new-comer proved to be a short-necked, red-faced,
deeply-scarred man, dressed in the uniform of the provost-marshal's
guards. The wine in Wat's brain prevented him for the time from
recognizing his ancient enemy, Haxo the Bull; but Haxo the Bull
nevertheless it was.
Scarlett was now most anxious to get Wat away in safety. There was also
a gleam of almost piteous appeal in the eyes of the Little Marie.
"My captain," she said, bending over and laying her hand on his sleeve,
"it is high time for you to go to your quarters; you can come and see
me again in the morning if you will."
For Wat was now talking louder than ever, and beating for emphasis upon
the table with his hand.
"And I repeat that whoever casts a slur upon the virtue and beauty of a
Scots maid has to settle accounts with Wat Gordon of Lochinvar--"
The men at the nearest table had also begun talking loudly, and the
voice of Haxo pierced the din.
"I tell you the girl is safely my master's meat, and she is a dainty
filly enough. Her name is Kate McGhie, and she is a land-owner's
daughter somewhere in the barren land of Scots. My lord bought
her good-will quickly enough with a gay present for herself and a
commission for her gossip's loutish husband--trust Barra for that. He
is never laggard in his affairs with women."
Wat Gordon was on his feet in an instant. The Little Marie
instinctively shrank aside from the white fierce face which she
encountered. It looked like the countenance of some one whom she had
never seen. The young man fairly spurned the table at which he had
been sitting, and with a single spring he was over the next and at the
breast of Haxo the Bull.
"Villain, you lie in your throat," he shouted, "and I will kill you for
your lie! 'Tis false as the lying tongue which I will presently tear
out of your foul mouth!"
The four men rose simultaneously and drew, some of them their swords
and the others their daggers. Wat would instantly have been stabbed
among them but that the Little Marie, dashing forward like a hawk,
threw her arms about the nearest of his foes, for a minute pinioning
his hands to his side.
Then Scarlett, with a sweep of his sword, leaped on the table in the
midst of them, crying "Fair play! Stand back there, all of you who do
not want to be spitted!"
Presently, finding Wat's grasp relax on his throat as he reached for
his weapon, Haxo shook himself free and drew the hanger which, in
honor of his advancement, he wore instead of his butcher's knife. Wat
had neither room nor yet time to draw his long sword; but with quick
baresark fury he caught up by the leg the heavy oaken chair on which
Haxo had been sitting, and twirling it over his head like a staff,
he struck the brawny butcher with the carved back of it fair on the
temple, almost crushing in his cheek. The Bull dropped to the floor
without a groan.
Then there ensued a battle fierce and fell in that upper corner of
the great room of the Coronation. There Wat stood at bay with the
oaken chair in his hand, while Scarlett's long sword turned every
way, and even the Little Marie, long unaccustomed to courtesy, showed
her fidelity to the salt of kindness she had tasted. She crouched low
behind the fighters, almost on her knees, and waited for a chance to
strike upward with the dagger she held in her hand. But the long room
swarmed black with their foes. The remaining four had already been
reinforced by half a dozen others, and the way to the door seemed
completely blocked. Then it was that Scarlett raised the rallying cry,
"Scots to me! Hither to me, blue bonnets all!"
And through the press were thrust the burly shoulders of Sergeant Davie
Dunbar and two of his comrades. All might now have gone differently
but for the madness working in the brain of Wat of Lochinvar. For the
insult to his sweetheart's good name, uttered by Haxo, had made him
resolve to kill every man at the table who had heard the blasphemous
slander.
"Arrest him!" the provost-marshal's men cried. "He has murdered Haxo!"
"Die, rogues and liars all!" shouted Wat, rushing at them in yet
fiercer wrath.
And without further parley he brought his chair down upon the shoulder
of the nearest, who sank on his face stunned with the mighty blow.
"Good Scots to the rescue!" cried Scarlett, as was his custom engaging
two men at a time with his point and easily keeping them in play.
So in this fashion, Wat leading and striking all down in his way with a
kind of desperate fury, Scarlett and Davie Dunbar, with the other two
Scots, pressing as closely after him as they could, the small compact
band made its way steadily and slowly towards the outgate of the Hostel
of the Coronation.
"Lord help us all!" cried the more terrified of their opponents; "let
us get out of the way of these praying blue bonnets when they are
angered."
For the floor began to be sprinkled with groaning men who had dropped
from the blades of the outlanders, and with stunned and maimed men
stricken down by the fierce vigor of Wat's barbaric onslaught.
Yet, in spite of all, it was a long time before the steadfast five
could force their way to the street.
By this time Wat held his chair by its only surviving leg, and the
blades of the small Scots phalanx dripped blood into their own basket
hilts. The street without was packed with townspeople, and even the
watch could not make way to apprehend them. When the Scots finally came
forth into the night it might, indeed, have gone very ill with them
had it not been that a patrol of Frisian horse chanced to pass at that
moment in front of the Hostel of the Coronation.
To them Scarlett cried out in their own country speech (with which he
was somewhat acquainted), "Help, there, for certain true soldiers of
the prince cruelly beset by townsfolk!"
Now this was the very wisest word he could have spoken. For whatever
private discontents they might cherish, all the soldiers of the camp
were of the faction of their general when it came to choosing between
the Prince of Orange and the turbulent and rebellious municipality of
Amersfort. The patrol swiftly opened out, and presently enclosed the
five Scots between their files. Thus they were able to pass safely
through the howling mob, which, however, made ugly rushes at them as
they went.
Presently they came to the headquarters of the portion of the force
domiciled in the city.
Wat, who for a time had been entirely sobered by the fierce excitement
of battle, now again felt his head reel with the sudden, sharp chill of
the night air.
Yet when the prisoners were confronted with the officer of the night,
he at once stepped forward and, without hesitation, assumed the sole
responsibility for the affair.
"I fear I have slain a man--or, mayhap, more than one," he said; "but
these, my friends, have had no part in the quarrel. They but assisted
me to fight my way out."
"Your name and regiment, sir?" said the officer in charge, civilly
enough.
"I am Walter Gordon, captain in Douglas's regiment of Dragoons,"
replied Walter, readily enough.
"Let Captain Gordon be taken to the military prison and there kept in
the safest cell," interrupted the clear, high voice of Barra. He had
entered unobserved, having followed the patrol along the street. The
officer of the night saluted the high councillor of the prince and
present provost-marshal of the camp and city of Amersfort.
Walter was therefore promptly delivered to the officer and file who had
been sent to escort him, and in a moment he went out with them into the
night.
"Were they souljers or civilians ye murthered, for sure?" asked the
officer, as they marched along the street. He spoke the pleasant tongue
of Ireland in a soft, far-reaching whisper.
"Townsfolk," returned Wat; "all except one hulking scoundrel of a
provost-marshal's man!"
"More power to ye," said the Irishman, promptly. "Give me the grip of
your hand--and, by my sowl, I'll give ye a chance to run for it at the
next corner."
But Wat declined the obliging offer of the good-hearted Irishman.
"I thank you with all my heart," he said. "It is kindly meant. But I
prefer to stand my trial. Things can't be worse with me than they are!"
"Faith, it's you that knows, my son," said the Irishman; "but to
Patrick Ryan's thinking a long hempen necktie, swung elegantly over a
beam, might make things a deal worse for ye!"
And in a minute more the iron gate of the military prison of Amersfort
had shut-to upon Wat Gordon.
CHAPTER XI
THE HEARTS OF WOMEN
Barra and Will Gordon returned together to the lodgings in the street
of Zaandpoort. There was a sinister look of inexpressible triumph on
the dark face of my Lord of Barra. When they reached home Will Gordon
threw himself silently, face downward, on the oak settle; for there
arose in his heart the memory of those days, not so long ago, when he
and Wat had slept under one plaid among the heather on the moors of
Scotland. And the tears stood in his eyes for the thing which he had
seen that night.
On their way back Barra had bubbled over with laughing sneers at the
downfall of his immaculate and virtuous cousin, but Will Gordon had
paced along sad and silent by his side. Ancient loyalty kept him
without words, yet in his heart he condemned Lochinvar most bitterly,
far more intensely indeed even than Barra.
Maisie and Kate were sitting busily sewing at their delicate white
seams when the two men entered. The little Dutch lamp had been
carefully trimmed, and the whole room radiated cosiest comfort. As was
her wont, Kate's place was by the window, where she sat looking at
her work, keeping a somewhat cold and white face steadfastly upon the
monotonous business of needle and thread.
Maisie sat sad and a little reminiscent of recent tears by the lamp.
Her eyes were moist, and she did not look at all in the direction of
Barra and her husband, as they entered.
A sense of strain in the air paralyzed conversation after the first
greetings had been interchanged. These were loud and eager on the side
of Barra, almost inaudible on the part of Kate and Maisie; and as for
Will Gordon, he lay where he had flung himself so suddenly down upon
the long oaken couch.
"Adventures are to the adventurous, and to-night we have adventured
indeed," at last began my Lord of Barra, speaking directly to his
hostess. "Your husband, with much kindness, accompanied me on my rounds
of inspection, and, among other curious discoveries, it was made
entirely plain to us why our polite acquaintance Lochinvar was in such
a hurry to leave us."
Barra paused with a certain pleasure and appreciation of his own wit
in his voice. But no one spoke in the room. Will Gordon, indeed, gave
an inarticulate groan and plunged heavily over upon the settle with
his face to the wall. Maisie turned her back a little more upon the
speaker, while Kate bent lower upon her sewing, as if the dim light had
suddenly made it harder for her to see the stitches.
"And if you hesitate to believe the extraordinary things I have to tell
you, my friend here, Captain Gordon of the Covenanting regiment, will
tell you where, in the discharge of my duty as provost-marshal of the
camp, it was our business to penetrate, and in what company and in what
circumstances we found your cousin of Lochinvar."
"We do not want to hear. It was all our fault!" said Maisie, turning
suddenly full upon the speaker. Unconsciously to himself, Barra had
been using a somewhat pompous and judicial tone, as though he were
pronouncing judgment upon a hardened offender.
At Maisie's words, the provost-marshal instantly sat erect in his
chair. He was exceedingly astonished. A few hours before he had seen
these two women stern almost to severity over a mere breach of good
manners. He could not imagine that now they would not utterly reject
and condemn such a reprobate as Wat Gordon had proved himself to be. He
felt that he must surely have been misunderstood, so he proceeded to
make his meaning clear.
"But I tell you plainly, my ladies," Barra continued, still more
impressively, "that your husband
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