Lochinvar: A Novel

"High-treason – a hanging or heading matter!" he answered, nodding his head very gravely.

The girl looked at Wat with a sudden access of interest.

"Lord, Lord, I would that I lived in Holland! High-treason, and at his age!" she exclaimed. "What chances must he not have had!"

Without further questioning concerning antecedents and character, she led the way within. They passed through a wide hall, and down a gallery painted of a pleasant pale green, into a neat kitchen with windows that opened outward, and which had a brick-built fireplace and a wide Dutch chimney at the end. Brass preserving pans, shining skillets, and tin colanders made a brave show, set in a sort of diminishing perspective upon the walls.

"Now if ye want breakfast ye must e'en put to your hand and help me to set the fire agoing, Gray Badger!" she cried, suddenly, looking at Scarlett. "Go get water to the spring. It is but a hundred yards beyond that oak in the hollow. And you, young Master High Treason, catch hold of that knife and set your white, high-treasonable hands to slicing the bacon."

CHAPTER XXV

TRUE LOVE AND PIGNUTS

Mehitabel Smith calmly went to the inner door, and reaching down a linen smock, she slipped it on over her head and fastened it in with a belt at the waist. Wat and Scarlett moved meekly and obediently to their several duties, and the business of breakfast-making went gayly forward.

When Wat returned from the side-table with the bacon sliced, Mehitabel Smith had the frying-pan ready and a fire of brushwood crackling merrily beneath it.

"Do you not think," she said, without looking at him, being busy buttering the bottom of the pan, "that fish and bacon go well together when one is hungry? For me, I am always hungry on Branksea. Were you ever hungry in prison?"

Wat muttered something ungracious enough, which might have been taken as a reply to either question, but the girl went on without heeding his answer. She sprinkled oatmeal over half a dozen fresh fish, and presently she had them making a pleasant, birsling sound in the pan, shielding her eyes occasionally with her hand when they spattered.

"You must have been very happy in prison?" she said.

And for the first time she looked directly at him for an answer. Wat was astonished.

"Happy!" he said, "why, one does not expect to be very happy in a Dutch prison, or for that matter in any other. Prisons are not set up to add to folks' happiness that ever I heard."

"But what experiences!" she cried; "what famous 'scapes and chances of adventure! To be in prison at your age (you are little more than a lad), and that for high-treason! Here on Branksea one has no such advantages. Only ships and seamen, pots of green paint, and hauling up and down the flag, or, at best, ninnies that think they ought to make love to you, because, forsooth, you are a girl. Ah, I would rather be in prison a thousand years!"

Wat watched her without speaking as she moved nimbly and with a certain deft, defiant ease about the sprucely painted kitchen.

"Do you believe in love? I don't!" she said, unexpectedly, turning the fish out on a platter and lifting the pan from the fire to prepare it for the bacon which Wat had been holding all the time in readiness for his companion.

"Yes, I do believe in love," said Wat, soberly, as though he had been repeating the Apostles' Creed. He thought of the little tight curls crisping so heart-breakingly about the ears of his love, and also of the grave which had been dug so deep under the sand-hills of Lis. There was no question. He believed with all his heart in love.

The girl darted a swiftly inquiring glance at him. But her suspicions were allayed completely by Wat's downcast and abstracted gaze. He was not thinking at all of her. She gave a sigh, half of relief and half of disappointment.

"Oh yes," she returned, quickly, "fathers and mothers, godfathers and godmothers, tutors and governors – that sort of love. But do you believe in love really – the love they sing about in catches, and which the lads prate of when they come awooing?"

Wat nodded his head still more soberly. "I believe in true love," he said.

"Oh, then, I pray you, tell me all about her!" cried Mehitabel Smith, at once laying down the fork with which she had been turning the bacon, and sitting down to look at Wat with a sudden increase of interest.

Scarlett came in a moment after and sniffed, with his nose in the air; then he walked to the pan in which the bacon was skirling.

"It seems to me that the victual is in danger of burning," he said. "I think next time it were wiser for the Gray Badger to fry the pan, and for those that desire to talk – ah! of high-treason – to go and fetch the water."

Mehitabel started up and began turning the bacon quickly.

"A touch of the pan gives flavor, I have ever heard," she said, unabashed; "and if you like it not, Gray Badger, you can always stick to the fish."

When breakfast was over, Scarlett and Wise Jan were ordered to wash the dishes. This they proceeded to do, clattering the platters and rubbing them with their towels awkwardly, using their elbows ten times more than was necessary. Scarlett worked with grim delight, and Jan with many grumblings. Then, having seen them set to their tasks, Mistress Mehitabel made Wat lift a pair of wooden buckets, scrubbed very white, and accompany her to the spring. She went first along the narrow path to show him the way. She had taken off her cooking-smock, and was again in the neat kirtle of dark blue cloth, which showed her graceful young figure to advantage.

When they reached the well, Mehitabel appeared to be in no hurry to return. She sat down, and to all appearance lost herself in thought, leaning her chin upon her hand and looking into the water.

"There was a lass here but yester-morn, no further gone," she said, "who believed in love. She gave me this, and bade me show it to the man that should come after her also believing in love."

She held out a small heart of wrought gold with letters graven upon it. Wat leaped forward and snatched it out of her hand.

"It is hers – Kate's. I have seen it a thousand times about her neck. She wore it ever upon the ribbon of blue."

And he pressed the token passionately to his lips. Mehitabel Smith looked on with an interested but entirely dispassionate expression.

"I wonder," she said, presently, "if it is as good to be in love as to sit in the tree-tops and eat pignuts?"

But Wat did not hear her; or, hearing, did not answer.

"It is Kate's – it is hers – hers. It has rested on her neck. She has sent it to me," he murmured. "She knew that I would surely compass the earth to seek her – that so long as life remained to me I should follow and seek her till I found her."

"Faith!" said Mehitabel, "I do believe this is the right man. He has the grip of it better than any I ever listened to. If he so kiss the gift, what would he not do to the giver?"

"Tell me," said Wat, looking eagerly and tremulously at her, "what said she when she gave you the token? – in what garb was she attired? – was her countenance sad? – were they that went with her kind?"

"Truly and truly this is right love, and no make-believe," said the girl, clapping her hands; "never did I credit the disease before, but ever laughed at them that came acourting with their breaking hearts and their silly, sighing ardors. But this fellow means it, every word. He has well learned his lover's hornbook. For he asks so many questions, and has them all tumbling over one another like pigs turned out of a clover pasture."

Wat made a little movement of impatience.

"I pray you be merciful, haste and tell me – for I have come far and suffered much!"

The pathetic ring in his voice moved the wayward daughter of Captain Smith of the Sea Unicorn.

"I will tell you," she answered, more seriously, "but in my own way. It was, I think, this lass of yours that sat here in the house-place and talked with me but four-and-twenty hours agone. She looked not in ill health but pale and anxious, with dark rings about her eyes. Those that were about her were kind enough, but watched her closely day and night – for that was the order of their master. But I am sure that the Lowland woman who was with her would, in an evil case, prove a friend to your love."

"And whither have they taken her?" asked Wat, anxiously.

Mehitabel Smith looked carefully every way before she attempted to answer.

"The name of the place I cannot tell at present. It is an island, remote and lonely, in the country of the Hebridean Small Isles; but I heard my father say that it bore somewhere near where the Long Island hangs his tail down into the ocean."

"She has gone in your father's ship, then?" asked Wat.

"Aye, truly," said Mehitabel Smith; "but your lass is to be taken off the Sea Unicorn at some point on the voyage, and thence to her destination in a boat belonging to the islanders. I heard the head man of them so advising my father."

As the girl went on with her tale, Wat began to breathe a little more freely. He had feared things infinitely worse than any that had yet come to pass. He was now on the track, and, best of all, he had the token which Kate had sent to him, in her wonderful confidence that he would never cease from seeking her while life lasted to him.

Mehitabel watched him quietly and earnestly. At last she said, a little wistfully, "I think, after all, it must be better than eating pignuts. I declare you are fonder of that lass than you are of yourself."

Wat laughed a lover's laugh of mellowest scorn. Mehitabel went on. "And I suppose you want to be with her all the time. You dream about her hair and the color of her eyes; you will kiss that bit of gold because she wore it about her neck. That is well enough for you. But to my thinking this love is but a sort of midsummer madness. For it is better to sleep sound than to dream; any golden guinea is worth more than that tiny heart on a ribbon, and would buy infinitely more cates – while it is best of all to sit heart-free among the topmost branches of the beeches and whistle catches while the sea-wind cradles you on the bough and the leaves rustle you to sleep like a lullaby. What, I pray you, is this love of yours to that?"