Lochinvar: A Novel

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!"