Lochinvar: A Novel

Then, while yet a child, she had been hunted down, petted, betrayed, and forsaken by the man who, being on a visit to Brussels, had first been attracted by her childish simplicity. It chanced that in the dark days of her despair she had found her way to Amersfort, and finally to the Hostel of the Coronation. She had been there but a bare week when Wat came into her life, and his words to the girl were the first of genuine, unselfish kindness she had listened to in that abode of smiling misery and radiant despair.

As a trampled flower raises its head after a gentle rain, so her scarcely dulled childish purity reawakened within her, and with it – all the more fiercely that it came too late – the love that suffereth all things and upbraideth not. Marie was suddenly struck to the heart by the agony of her position. She might love, but none could give her back true love in return. Her soul abode in blank distress after the fray had been quelled and Walter led away to prison. Without speech to any at the inn of the Coronation, Marie fled to the house of a decent woman of her own country, who undertook the washing and dressing of fine linen – dainty cobweb frilleries for the ladies of the city, and stiffer garmentry for the severe and sober court of the Princess of Orange.

For love had been a plant of swift growth in the lush and ill-tended garden of the girl's heart. Constantly after this both dawn and dusk found her beneath Wat's window. Marie contrived a little basket attached to a rope, which he let down from the window in the swell of the tower. She it was who instructed Wat how to make the first cord of sufficient length and strength by ravelling a stocking and replaiting the yarn. In this fashion Marie brought to Wat's prison-cell such fruits as the warehouses of the Nederlandish companies afforded – strange-smelling delicacies of the utmost Indies, and early dainties from gardens nearer home. Linen, too, fresh and clean, she brought him, and flowers – at all of which, for the consideration of a dole of gold, the jailer winked, so that Wat's heart was abundantly touched by the pathetic devotion of the girl. Scarce could she be induced to accept the money which Wat put into her basket when he let it down again. And even then Marie took the gold only that she might have the means of obtaining other delicacies for Wat – such as were beyond the reach of purchase out of the meagre stipend she received from the laundress of fine linen with whom her working-days were spent.

More seldom did Marie come to the Street of the Prison in the evening after the work of the day was done. For there were many who knew her moving to and fro in these early summer twilights, so that she feared that her mission might be observed and Wat moved to another cell, out of reach of the Street of the Prison.

But one afternoon of sullen clouds and murky weather, when few people were abroad upon the streets of Amersfort, Marie sickened of the hot steamy atmosphere of the laundry and the chatter of the maids of the quarter, in which she was allowed to have no part. She finished her work earlier than the others – perhaps for that reason – and stole quietly away to the tower of Wat's prison, where it jutted out over the cobble-stones of the pavement.

Wat was at his post, looking out, as usual, upon the slackening traffic and quickening pleasure-seeking of the street. He was truly glad to see the girl, and greeted her appearance with a kind smile.

"I had not expected you till the morning," he said. "But I have lived on the freshness of your flowers all day. I have also had my cell washed. Black Peter, my jailer, was inclined to be complaisant to me this morning. It is his birthday, he says."

Wat smiled as he said it. For he had bestowed one of his few remaining coins upon Peter; which, ever since, that worthy had been swallowing to his good health in the shape of pure Hollands. Indeed, at this moment there came from below the rollicking voice of jolly Black Peter, singing a song which ran through a catalogue of camp pleasures and soldierly delights, such as certainly could not all have been enjoyed within the grim precincts of the prison of Amersfort.

"You are sure that there is no friend I can take a message to?" asked the Little Marie, for the fiftieth time; "no beloved mistress to whom I can carry a letter?"

"None," said Wat, smiling sadly. "But there," he continued, pointing quickly across the Street of the Prison at a man hurrying out of sight, "is one whom, an it please you, you may take note of. I am not able to show you a friend. But yonder goes my heart's enemy. There at the corner – the dark man in the suit of velvet, with the orange-lined cloak and the sword hilted with gold."

The Little Marie darted across the street in a moment, and threaded her way deftly among the boisterous traffic of the huxters' stalls. Presently she came back. There was a new and dangerous excitement in her eye.

"I know him," she said; "it is my Lord Barra, the provost-marshal. He is your enemy, you say. It is well. But he was my enemy before he was yours. Sleep sound," she continued, looking up at him with an eye as clear and peaceful as a cloistered nun's. "Take no thought for your enemy, but only, ere you sleep, say a prayer to your Scottish God for the sinful soul of the Little Marie that loves you better than her life."

CHAPTER XIV

MAISIE'S NIGHT QUEST

In the street of Zaandpoort, upon a certain evening, it had grown early dark. The sullen, sultry day had broken down at the gloaming into a black and gurly night of rain, which came in fierce dashes, alternating with fickle, veering flaws and yet stranger lulls and stillnesses. Anon, when the rain slackened, the hurl of the storm overhead could be heard, while up aloft every chimney in Amersfort seemed to shriek aloud in a different key. Maisie had gone down an hour ago and barred the outer door with a stout oaken bolt, hasping the crossbar into its place as an additional precaution. She would sit up, she said, till William returned from duty, and then she would be sure to hear him approach. On a still night she could distinguish his footsteps turning out of the wide spaces of the Dam into the echoing narrows of the street of Zaandpoort.

She and Kate sat between the newly lighted lamp and the fire of wood which Maisie had insisted on making in order to keep out the gusty chills of the night. A cosier little upper-room there was not to be found in all Amersfort.

But there had fallen a long silence between the two. Maisie, as usual, was thinking of William. It troubled her that her husband had that day gone abroad without his blue military overcoat, and she declared over and over that he would certainly come home wet from head to foot. Kate's needle paused, lagged, and finally stopped altogether. Her dark eyes gazed long and steadily into the fire. She saw a black and gloomy prison-cell with the wind shrieking into the glassless windows. She heard it come whistling and hooting through the bars as though they were infernal harp-strings. And she thought, at once bitterly and tenderly, of one who might be even then lying upon the floor without either cloak or covering.

A sharp, hard sob broke into Maisie's pleasant revery. She went quickly over to the girl, and sat down beside her.

"Be patient, Kate," she said; "it will all come right if you bide a little. They cannot kill him, for none of the men who were wounded are dead – though for their own purposes his enemies have tried to make the prince believe so."

Kate lifted her head and looked piteously at Maisie.

"But even if he comes from prison, he will never forgive me. It was my fault – my fault," she said, and let her head fall again on Maisie's shoulder.

"Nay," said Maisie; "but I will go to him and own to him that the fault was mine – tell him that he was not gone a moment before I was sorry and ran after him to bring him back. He may be angry with me if he likes; but, at least, he shall understand that you were free from blame."

But this consolation, perhaps because it was now repeated for the fiftieth time, somehow failed to bring relief to Kate's troubled heart.

"He will never come back, I know," she said; "for I sent him away! Oh, how I wish I had not sent him away! Why – why did you let me?"

Maisie's mouth dropped to a pathetic pout of despair. It was so much easier comforting a man, she thought, than a girl. Now, if it had been William —

But at that moment a loud and continuous knocking was heard at the outer door, which had been so carefully barred against the storm.

"It is my dear!" cried Maisie, jumping eagerly to her feet, "and I had not heard his footstep turn into the street."

And she looked reproachfully at Kate, as though in this instance she had been entirely to blame.

"It is the first time that I ever missed hearing that," she said, and ran quickly down the stairs. As she threw open the fastenings a noisy gust of wind rioted in, and slammed all the doors with claps like thunder.

"William!" she cried, "dear lad, forgive me; I could not hear your foot for the noise of the wind, though I was listening. Believe me that – "

But it was the face of an unknown man which confronted her. He was clad in a blue military mantle, under which a uniform was indistinctly seen.

"Your pardon, madam," he said, looking down upon her, "are you not Mistress Gordon, the wife of Captain William Gordon, of the regiment of the Covenant?"

"I am indeed his wife," said Maisie, with just pride; "what of him?"

"I am bidden to say that he urgently requires your presence at the guard-house."

Maisie felt all the warm blood ebb from about her heart. But she only bit her lip, and set her hand hard over her breast.

"He is ill – he is dead!" she panted, scarcely knowing what she said.

"Nay," said the man, "not ill, and not dead. But he sends you word that he needs you urgently."

"You swear to me that he is not dead?" she said, seizing him fiercely by the wet cuff of his coat. For the man had laid his hand upon the edge of the wind-blown door to keep it steady as he talked, or perhaps in fear lest it should be shut in his face before his errand was accomplished.

Without waiting for another word besides the man's reiterated assurance, Maisie fled up-stairs, and telling Kate briefly that her husband needed her and had sent for her to the guard-room, she thrust a sheathed dagger into her bosom, and ran back down to the outer door.

"Bide a moment, and I will come with you!" cried Kate, after her.

"No, no," answered Maisie, "stay you and keep the house. I shall not be long away. Keep the water hot against William's return."

So saying, she shut the outer door carefully behind her, and hurried into the night.

Maisie had expected that the man who had brought the message would be waiting to guide her, but he had vanished. The long street of Zaandpoort was bare and dark from end to end, lit only by the lights within the storm-beaten houses where the douce burghers of Amersfort were sitting at supper or warming their toes at an early and unwonted fire.

Then for the first time it occurred to Maisie that she did not know whether her husband would be found at the guard-house of the palace, or at that by the city port, where was the main entrance to the camp. She decided to try the palace first.

With throbbing heart the young wife ran along the rain-swept streets. She had thrown her husband's cloak over her arm as she came out, with the idea of making him put it on when she found him. But she was glad enough, before she had ventured a hundred paces into the dark, roaring night, to drawn it closely over her own head and wrap herself from head to foot in it.

As she turned out upon the wide spaces of the Dam of Amersfort, into which Zaandpoort Street opened, she almost ran into the arms of the watch. An officer, who went first with a lantern, stopped her.

"Whither away so fast and so late, maiden?" he said; "an thou give not a fitting answer we must have thee to the spinning-house."

"I am the wife of a Scottish officer," said Maisie, nothing daunted. "And he being, as I think, taken suddenly ill, has sent for me by a messenger, whom in the darkness I have missed."

"Your husband's name and regiment?" demanded the leader of the watch, abruptly, yet not unkindly.

"He is called William Gordon," she said, "and commands to-night at the guard-house. He is a captain in the Scots regiment, called that of the Covenant."