Lochinvar: A Novel

"But," he added, with quickly returning melancholy, "doubtless there are dark days before us, of which, however, we now know the worst. Will my Kate be sufficient for these things? We have heard what Barra says – bewitched by what cantrip I know not; but certain it seems that your father hath ta'en him a new wife, and she hath so worked on his spirit that he would now deliver you to our enemy over there, on the isle from which I took you. Suppose that all things went against us, Kate, and that I was never more than a wanderer and an outcast; suppose your father ordered, your friends compelled, your own heart told you tales of our love's hopelessness, or others carried to you evil things of me – would you be strong enough to keep faith, Kate, to hold my hand firmly as you do now, and having done all, still be able to stand?"

The girl looked at her lover a little sadly while he was speaking, as if he had, indeed, a far road to travel ere he could win to the inmost secret of a girl's heart.

"Wat Gordon," she said, "know you not that there is but one kind of love? There are not two. The love of the wanton that grasps and takes only is no love – but light-o'-love. The love that flinches back into shelter because the wind blows is not love; nor yet that which hides itself, afraid when the lift darkens or when the thunder broods and the bolt of heaven is hurled."

There came a kind of awful sweetness on his love's face as she stood looking up at him which made Wat Gordon tremble in his turn. By his doubts he had jangled the deepest chords of a heart. He stood in the presence of things mightier than he had dreamed of. Yet his fear was natural. He knew himself to be true as God is true. But then he had everything to gain – this woman who held his hand all things to lose, everything to endure.

Kate went on, for strong words were stirring in her heart, and the mystery of a mighty love brooded over the troubled waters of her soul like the mystery of the seven stars in God's right hand.

"But one kind of love," she said, in a low, hushed voice, which Wat had to incline his ear to catch. And there came also a crooning rhythm into her utterance, as if she were inspired and spake prophecies. "How says the Writing? 'Love suffereth long and is kind.' So at least the preachers expound it. There is no self in love. Self dies and is buried as soon as soul has looked into soul through the windows of the eyes, as soon as heart has throbbed against naked heart, and life been taken into life. Dead and buried is Self, and over his head the true-lovers set up a gravestone, with the inscription: 'Love seeketh not her own – is not easily provoked – thinketh no evil.'"

"Oh love," groaned Wat, "if I could but believe it! But all things are so grievously against me. I can only bid you wait, and after all there may be but an exile's fate to share with you, a barren, unfruitful lordship; while there are those, great and powerful, who could set the coronet on your brow."

The girl let his hand drop. She stood looking a long while to seaward. Then with sudden, quick resolve, she turned and faced him. She lifted her hands and laid them on his shoulders, keeping him at the full stretch of her arms so that she might look deep down into his heart.

"I am not angry with you, Wat," she said, softly and slowly, "though I might be. Why will you let me fight this battle alone? Why must I have faith for both of us? Surely in time you will understand and believe. Hear me, true lad," she put her hands a little farther over his shoulders and moved an inch nearer him; "you make me say things that shame me. But what can I do? I only tell you what I would be proud to tell all the world, if it stood about us now as it shall stand on the great Day of Judgment. I would rather drink the drop and bite the crust by the way-side with you, Wat Gordon; rather be an outcast woman among the godless gypsy-folk with you – aye, without either matron's ring to clasp my finger or maiden's snood to bind my hair – than be a king's wife and sit on a throne with princesses about me for my tire-women."

She had brought her face nearer to his as she spoke, white and drawn with her love and its expression. Now when she had finished she held him for a moment fixed with her eyes, as it were nailing the truth she had spoken to his very soul. Then swiftly changing her mood, she dropped her arms from his shoulders and moved away along the beach.

Wat hastened after her and walked beside her, watching her. He strove more than once to take her hand, but she kept it almost petulantly away from him. The tears were running down her cheeks silently and steadily. Her underlip was quivering. The girl who had been brave for two, now shook like a leaf. They came to the corner of the inland cliff of Fiara, which had gradually withdrawn itself farther and farther up the beach, as the tide-race swept more and more sand along the northern front of the inland. A rowan-tree grew out of a cleft. Its trunk projected some feet horizontally before it turned upward. Kate leaned against it and buried her face in her hands.

Wat stood close beside her, longing with all his nature to touch her, to comfort her; but something held him back. He felt within him that caressing was not her mood.

"Hearken, sweet love," he said, beseechingly, clasping his hands over each other in an agony of helpless desire; "I also have something to say to you."

"Oh, you should not have done it," she said, looking at him through her streaming tears; "you ought not to have let me say it. You should have believed without needing me to tell you. But now I have told you, I shall never be my own again; and some day you will think that I have been too fond, too sudden – "

"Kate," said Wat, all himself again at her words, and coming masterfully forward to take her by the wrists. He knelt on one knee before her, holding her in his turn, almost paining her by the intensity of his grasp. "Kate, you shall listen to me. You blame me wrongly; I have not indeed, to-day, told you of my faith, of my devotion, of the certainty of my standing firm through all the darkness that is to come. And I will tell you why."

"Yes," said the girl, a little breathlessly; "tell me why."

"Because," said Wat, looking straight at her, "you never doubted these things even once. You knew me better, aye, even when you flouted me, set me back, treated me as a child, even when others spoke to you of my lightness, told you of my sins and wrong-doings. I defy you, Kate McGhie," he continued, his voice rising – "I defy you to say that there ever was a moment when you honestly doubted my love, when you ever dreamed that I could love any but you – so much as an instant when the thought that I might forget or be false to you had a lodgment in your heart. Kate, I leave it to yourself to say."

This is the generous uncandor which touches good women to the heart. For Wat was not answering the real accusation she had brought against him – that he had not believed her, but had continued to doubt her in the face of her truest words and most speaking actions.

"Ah, Wat," she said, surrendering at once, "forgive me. It is true. I did not ever doubt you."

She smiled at him a moment through her tears.

"I knew all too well that you loved me – silly lad," she said; "I saw in your eyes what you thought before you ever told me – and even now I have to prompt you to sweet speeches, dear Sir Snail!"

At this encouragement Wat would gladly have drawn her closer to him, but the girl began to walk back towards their heather-grown shelter.

"Yet I care not," she said. "After all, 'tis a great thing to get one's follies over in youth. And you are my folly, lad – a grievous one, it is true, but nevertheless one that now I could ill do without. Nay," she went on, seeing him at this point ready to encroach, "not that to-night, Wat. All is said that needs to be said. Let us return."

And so they walked soberly and silently to the wide-halled chamber recessed in the ancient sea-cliff. Kate paused ere they entered, and held her face up with a world of sweet surrender in it for Wat to kiss at his will.

"Dear love," she said, softly, "I beseech you do not distrust me any more. By this and by this, know that I am all your own. Once you made me say it. Now of mine own will I do it."

She spoke the last words shyly; then swiftly, as one that takes great courage on the edge of flight:

"Bend down your ear, laddie," she said, and paused while one might count a score.

Wat listened keenly, afraid that his own heart should beat too loud for him to catch every precious word.

"I love you so that I would gladly die to give you perfect happiness even for a day," she whispered.

And she vanished within, without so much as bidding him good-night.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

MISFORTUNATE COLIN

The completeness of the peace and content which reigned on Fiara was only equalled by the fierceness of the storm of passion and hellish anger which broke over Suliscanna on the day after the chief's arrival. It was already late in the forenoon when a messenger, haggard and half blind with terror and the dying out of the drink in his brain, brought to the house of the chief the news of the destruction of the boats and the flight of the prisoners.

Barra rose to his feet. His hand instinctively groped for a dagger, and not finding it, he struck the man to the ground with his clinched fist. During the night he had probably been the only sober man on the island. When he went out he found a pale and terror-stricken population. Women peered anxiously at him from their hovels or scudded among the scattered bowlders on the hill, with children tagging wearily after them and clinging to their skirts.

As he came near the landing-place a woman skirled suddenly from the back of a rock. The wild voice startled him. It was like the crying of the death-keen.

"Who is that?" demanded Barra of his nearest henchman.

"'Tis the wife of the watchman, Misfortunate Colin," replied Alister McAlister, who this morning had somehow accomplished the gravity of a judge on circuit. He had been all night in attendance outside the chief's door – so that, although he had carried out his declared intentions to the letter, he was yet wholly guiltless of the damning negligence which the Lord of Barra was now about to investigate and punish.

Presently the Calf and the Killer were discovered, sleeping the sleep of the greatly intoxicated. They still lay with Wat's rope about them, clasped in fraternal arms, their breaths combining to make one generous steam of Hollands gin. Misfortunate Colin lay as he had fallen, with the keys of the dungeon tucked under his belt. The chief turned him over with his foot.

"Nail him up to that door by the hands and feet!" he ordered, briefly, looking at the man with cold, malevolent eyes.

A woman's shriek rang out, and like a mænad she came flying down the hill, loose-haired, wild-eyed, and flung herself down, grovelling bestially at Barra's feet.

"Mercy, master of life and death!" she cried, clasping him firmly by the knees; "all misfortunes fall on my man. And this is not his fault. All the island was even as he is."

"But all the island had not the charge of a prisoner," cried Barra.

Then without further question men approached to seize the man of fated fortunes, and he would doubtless have been immediately crucified on the door which he had failed to guard but for the interference of Mistress McAlister.

She came fearlessly forth from her adjacent dwelling, clad in her decent white cap and apron, looking snod and wiselike as if she had been going to the Kirk of Colmonel on a sacrament Sabbath. Even as Barra looked at her he was recalled to himself. To him she represented that civilization from which he had so recently come, and which looked askance on the wild vengeances that were expected and even thought proper among the clansmen of Suliscanna.

"My lord," she said, "there was one man lang syne that was crucified with nails for the sins of the people. Be kinder to poor Colin. Tie him up with ropes, lest his blood be on your head, and ye win not within the mercy of the Crucified."

Now though when abroad he made a pretence of religious fervor for political purposes, in reality Barra was purely pagan and cared nothing for Bess's parable. Nevertheless, he acknowledged tacitly the force of an outside civilization and another code of justice, speaking to him in the person of the woman from Ayrshire.

"Tie him up with ropes," he commanded, abruptly.

And so in a trice the Misfortunate Colin was secured to the door of the dungeon of which he had proved himself so inefficient a guard, his arms fixed by the wrists to the corners of it, and his heavy, drunken head rolling loosely from side to side upon his breast. His wife knelt at his feet, but without daring so much as to touch him with a finger. Round his neck swung the keys, the emblem of his broken trust. As for the Calf and the Killer, they were flung, bound as they were, into the dungeon, where upon awaking their seeming fraternal amity suddenly gave way, and they bit and butted at each other to the extent of their bonds with mutual recriminations and accusations of treachery.

Barra surveyed carefully every trace which had been left of the manner of the prisoners' escape. But for the present, at least, he could come to no conclusion, save that they had escaped in a boat, probably with the help of Wise Jan. He judged also that, thanks to this excellent navigator, the fugitives were by this time far beyond the reach of his present vengeance. Nevertheless he left nothing untried. He climbed the heights of Lianacraig and looked out seaward and northward. But he could see nothing upon the black ridge of the central cliffs of Fiara, and nothing in the gloomy strait which separated it from the opposite rock-wall of Suliscanna. All in that direction was warded by the race of the Suck, ridging dangerously on either side and tailing away to the north in a jabble of confused water.

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