Lochinvar: A Novel

The young girl looked wistfully at him, and laid her hand quickly on her heart.

"Ah, it is the house of your love – I know it," she said, sadly and reproachfully; "and you have said so often that none loved you – that none cared for you."

Wat smiled the pale ghost of a smile, unseen in the darkness of the night.

"It is true that once on a time I loved one dwelling in this house. But she loved me not – "

"It is impossible," moaned Marie. "I know that she must have loved you – "

"No, she loved me not," answered Wat; "but, as I think, she loved the man whom you – "

Wat stepped back into shadow, and Marie clutched his cloak with a nervous hand. It was Will Gordon who came down the stairs. Haggered, unshaven, looking straight before him with set eyes, he was not the same man who had come so cosily back from the guard-room of the palace the night before with his wife upon his arm.

Wat advanced a pace out of the dark of the arch. He held out his hand.

"Will," he said, "with you I quarrelled not. And I think that if your wife, who used to be so stanchly my friend, knew my broken heart, she, too, would forgive my hasty words, and be ready to understand evil appearances that were no more than appearances."

But Will Gordon did not take the outstretched hand which Wat held a moment in the air and then dropped sadly to his side.

"Tell me first," he said, "where you have hidden our Kate, and what you have to do with the killing of my Lord of Barra? After that I will either take your hand or set my sword in your heart."

"Will Gordon!" cried Wat, starting back, "was it for this that we two kept Wellwood's men at bay under the arch at Holyrood? For this that we lay shoulder to shoulder on the chill moors, that in these latter days you should charge me with crimes of which I know nothing? Hidden Kate? Why, is not Kate here, behind the glass of that window? Does she not sleep soundly, recking nothing of evil or the sorrow of others, upon her bed? Is not her maiden heart as ever free and careless – "

"Wat, I believe you, lad," said Will; "it was a hasty and ill-conceived thought of mine. I know you love us all overmuch to bring harm to our lassie. But, certainly, Kate is lost – has been carried off – and now they are seeking her everywhere, charging her, forsooth, with the slaying of my Lord Barra."

At the last words Wat laughed a little scornful laugh.

He had not yet taken in the terrible import of the news concerning Kate's loss. But it seemed a foolishly monstrous thing that even in jest she should be charged with the death of Barra, while not ten yards behind him, in the dark of the arched doorway, stood the Little Marie, with her dagger scarcely dry in her garter.

Then, after a moment, Will's first words suddenly came back to him, as if they had been echoed from the tall buildings which stood about them.

"You do not mean it – Kate gone?" he said, dully, and without comprehension; "it is impossible. Who so wicked in all this land as to have done the thing?"

Then Will told him all the tale of the false message and of their home-coming.

"It is Barra's trick – what other?" Wat said, at once; "I saw that he loved her – if such a poisonous reptile can love. But I thought not that even he could devise her wrong, else had I slain him on the spot."

Wat meditated a little while in silence. "Did Kate tell you if he had spoken aught to her of love?"

"He offered her the most honorable marriage, and yet greater things when the prince should come to his own. But she would have none of him," replied Will Gordon.

"It is enough," cried Wat. "Certainly this is an affair of my lord's. Dead or alive, I will trace out his plots till I find his trail. It may be, after all, but a matter of Haxo the Bull, his Calf, and his Killer. Give me no more than a sword and pistols, and my belt with the gold that is in your strong-box."

"Will you not come up with me, Wat?" said Will Gordon. "Come, cousin."

"Nay," said Wat, "there is not time. It is but now that I have escaped from their prison. In an hour there will be the hue-and-cry, and then they will surely search your house. I must be far on the sea-road by daybreak. Only furnish me with necessities, cousin mine, and let me go. My humblest service to your wife – but tell her not till after I am gone!"

Will Gordon went back up the stairs. Presently he was down again with the weapons, with enough and to spare of ammunition, a loaf of wheaten bread, a flask of wine, and the broad leathern belt with the gold-pieces, which slipped down like a weighty serpent as he laid it in Wat's hands. The money had been kept sacred for just such an emergency.

The cousins bade each other a kindly adieu in the fashion of other and happier times, and then Will Gordon returned sadly to his wife.

Wat stepped back to the shelter where he had left Marie, but she was not to be seen. He looked every way and called softly; but the girl had vanished.

"It is perhaps as well!" he said, the Scot's prudence within him warring with his gratitude towards the girl who had twice risked her life for him without thought of reward.

He took his way alone across the broad squares and over the canals to Jack Scarlett's lodgings. There was a light in the window as he approached. He knocked gently, and a gruff voice ordered him to come in, or else (as an equally satisfactory alternative) to proceed incontinently to quite other regions.

Wat entered, and there, seated upon the side of his bed, he found Scarlett with one boot off and the other still upon his foot. His eyes were set in his head, and a kindly, idiotic smile was frozen on his face.

At the sight of Wat, pale as death, with his clothes frayed and disarranged with his long sojourn in prison, Scarlett started up. With a vigorous wave of his hand he motioned his visitor away.

"Avaunt! as the clerks say. Get away, briskly, or I will say the Lord's Prayer at thee (that's if I can remember it). Come not near a living man. Wat Gordon in the flesh with a long sword was bad enough; but Wat Gordon dead, with an unshaven chin and clothed out of a rag-shop, is a thousand times worse. Alas, that it should come so soon to this! I am shamed to be such a shaveling in my cups! Yet of a truth I drank only seven bottles and a part of an eighth. This comes of being a poor orphan, and being compelled to drink the most evil liquor of this unfriendly country!"

"Scarlett," said Wat, seriously, "listen to me. I am going on a long quest. Will you come with me? I need a companion now as a man never needed comrade before! Mine enemy has stolen my love, and I go to find her!"

"Away – get away!" cried Scarlett. "I want not to die yet awhile. I desire time to repent – that is, when I grow old enough to repent. There is Sergeant Hilliard over there at the end of the passage," he went on, eagerly, as if a famous idea had struck him, "his hair is gray, if you like, and he has a most confounded gout. He will gladly accompany you. Be advised, kind ghost. Have the goodness to cross the stairway to Hilliard. Remember, I was ever thy friend in life, Wat Gordon!"

"Beshrew your tipsy, idiot soul," thundered Wat, rising in a towering passion; "have you drunk so much that you know not a living man from one dead and damned? I will teach thee the difference, and that sharply."

And with that he went over to the bedside, and banged Scarlett's head soundly against the rafters of the garret, exclaiming at every thump and crash, "I pray you, Jack Scarlett, say when you are convinced that Wat Gordon is flesh and blood, and not an airy ghost."

It did not take much of this most potent logic to persuade the ghost-seer that he had to do with Wat Gordon in his own proper and extremely able-bodied person.

"Enough!" he cried; "hold your hands, Wat. Could you not have said as much at first, and not stood gaping there like a week-old corpse done up in a winding-sheet?"

"Thou donnert ass!" cried Wat. "Will you come with me on my quest, or will you bide on here in Amersfort among putty-souled huxters teaching shambling recruits how to stand upon their legs?"

"Of a truth, Buchan's knaves are indeed most hopeless. Yet whither can I go? I know not of a better service," said Scarlett, shaking his head doubtfully.

"But the adventure, man," cried Wat; "think of the adventure over seas, through continents, upon far islands, all in quest of a true lass that hath been trapped by devils, and may be treated most uncivilly. It makes me mad!"

"All these are most extremely well for you, Wat Gordon of Lochinvar. You are a younger man, and these bones of mine like well to lie on a soft bed at my age. Also, and chiefly, the lass is your lass, and not mine. Were you to find her to-morrow, what should I get out of all the errant jackassery in the world?"

"John Scarlett," cried Wat, nodding his head, solemnly, "thy heart is grown no better than a chunk of fat lard. There is no spirit in thee any more. Go, turn over on thy side and snore, till it be time to go forth once more to drill thy rotten sheep's regiment. God kens, 'tis all you are good for now, to be bell-wether to such a shuffling, clod-hopping crew. 'Keep your head up! Fall not over your musket! Prod up that man in the rear! I pray you do not hold your gun as if it were a dandling baby! March!' Pshaw! John Scarlett, is that the life for a man or for a puddle-rolling pig of the stye?"

Scarlett appeared to consider. He looked at the nails in the sole of his boot with an air of grave deliberation, as if they could help him to a decision.

"'Tis true, in truth most truly true," he said, "it is a dog's life. But, after all, there is ever the chance of war."

"War? And will not I give thee wars to fill thy belly, and leave something over for stuffing to thy calves?" cried Wat. "Why, man, thy sword will never be in its sheath – fighting, seeking, spying, we will overpass land and sea, hiding by heather and hill, creeping down by the bonny burnside to win our speckled breakfasts out of the pools – "

"Tush, man," answered Scarlett, pettishly, "for all you know, your Kate may be shut up in the next street. And besides, as I said, after all, she is your lass, not mine."

Wat stepped back with a fine gesture of renunciation.

"Well," he said, "has it come to this? Never did I think to see the day when Jack Scarlett – old Jack Scarlett of the wrist-of-steel – would turn sheep and be afraid to set his shoulder to Wat Gordon's, or even to cross blades with him, as he did the other night in the Inn of Brederode. But old Jack has become no better than a gross, rotten, grease-lined crock, and – Lord, Lord, such a flock as he leads on parade after him!"

"S'blood! I will e'en break thy head, Wat, an' thou cease not thy cackle. Now I will come with thee just to prove I am no sheep. No, nor craven either. But only the greatest and completest old fool that ever held a commission from a brave prince and one of the few good paymasters in Europe."