Lochinvar: A Novel

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.