Lochinvar: A Novel

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."