Lochinvar: A Novel

Meanwhile, upon Fiara Wise Jan ran his errands and gathered his drift-wood under the orders of the master-at-arms, while Wat and Kate, content to dwell together in an innocent garden of Eden, a garden from which the serpent was for the moment excluded, walked hand in hand under the shelter of the long central cliff-line of the isle on which they had found shelter. The history of their love's growth was a constant marvel to them, and their chief interest and happiness now lay in unravelling the why and the wherefore of each incident in their pasts. How at such a time one thought this – how at such another they both thought the same identical thing – though one was interned in a Dutch prison and the other tossing on the waters of the North Sea. Now that they were fully assured as to their mutual loves – for even Wat had ceased to doubt, if not to marvel – they had time and to spare for the comparison of their feelings in the past, and for the most exhaustive examination of their possibilities in the future.

"Tell me a tale," commanded Kate, as they sat together on the projecting part of the trunk of the rowan-tree set in the angle of the cliff.

"Which tale?" asked Wat, promptly, as if there were only two in the world – as indeed there were, for them. Kate sighed at the impossibility of having both at once – the wondrous tale of their past, and the yet more wondrous and aureate tale of their future.

"Tell me how you first loved me, and when, and why, and how much?" she said, since perforce she had to choose one.

Then Wat, delving always further and further into the past, produced instance after instance to prove that ever since he had seen her, known her, hearkened to her voice, there had not been a moment when he had not loved her.

And Kate, resting the dusky tangle of her soft curls on his shoulder, sighed again and again with a nestling bliss to listen to tale so sweet.

"You have forgotten about what you thought coming up the stairs in Zaandpoort Street," she would correct. For she knew the track of the story-teller by heart, and like a child with a favorite fairy tale, she resented omissions almost as much as she suspected the genuineness of additions.

"Now tell me more about seeing me lying on Maisie's lap with hands clasped behind my head. And about what you thought then."

And so most innocently she would put her hands in the very position it was Wat's duty to describe, which naturally for some moments disturbed his ideas and interfered with the continuity of the history.

But as soon as they turned homeward they became, after their manner, severely practical.

"Kate," said Wat, as they walked together – Wat's hand mostly on his sweetheart's shoulder, after the manner of school-boys that are comrades – "'tis high time we were taking thought for our escape. Each day makes the coming of the ship to carry off Barra and his retinue a nearer possibility."

Kate sighed as she looked on the long barrier of the northern breakers whitening the horizon, and then at the mellow floods of peaceful light which poured in from the west, where the seabirds were circling and diving.

"And leave all this," she said, wistfully, "and you?"

"Nay, no need to leave me – if you will stay with me," quoth Wat, cheerfully; "but to come with me to mine own land, to be my love and my queen."

"And what would you do with me there?" she said, looking up at him. "Would not you be an outlaw, and I no better than an encumbrance while you remain in hiding?"

"I think not that the pursuit is so keen as it was before the king began to protect those of his own religion," answered Wat. "I believe we should find that the worst of the shower had slacked. And then there is always the old tower in the middle of the loch. Since my mother's death no one has dwelt in it. We would be sure of a shelter there."

Kate shook her head wistfully, like one with the same desires but better knowledge.

"Wat, my dear," she made him answer, "you speak by the heart, and it is my heart also, God knows; but now I must speak a word or two by the head. You and I must e'en bide a wee and wait. It is better so. I will not be a charge on you. If I am not welcome at home, why, there is always sweet Grizel McCulloch at the Ardwell to whom I can go. She will gladly give me a hiding-place and a bite for company's sake till the blast goes by. If all speak the truth in Holland where we come from, it will not be long ere the king has filled up the measure of his folly."

"In that case I might have to fight for the fool and his folly both," said Wat, quietly.

"Aye, there it is!" cried Kate; "a lass in her heart cares nought for king or prince when once she has given herself to love. But a man will hold to his own way of it, and put in peril his happiness and the happiness of another in order to have the right shade of color set upon the cushions of the throne."

Wat smiled at her yet more gently.

"In Holland," he said, "I fought for the prince and was true to him; but it is another matter here, where we are under the rule and sway of the anointed king of the ancient Scottish name."

"Ah, well, Wat," said Kate, "that is not my thought of it, as well you know. But I do not love you so little, lad, that I could think the less of you for standing by your colors, even though with your own eyes ye have seen that king make of Scotland little better than a hunting-field."

"James Stuart is my king as surely as Kate McGhie is my love," said Wat, mighty gravely. "I argue as little about one as the other."

Kate touched his arm gently.

"Dear love – no," she said. "Do not let us dispute any more. You are you, and so you love me true. You shall fight for what king you will, only keep safe your heart and life for me – for they are all I have."

They had reached the great chamber in the cliff which lay open to the north, and in which Jack Scarlett already had his cooking-fire of charcoal alight for the evening meal. A hundred yards from the entrance there met them a sweet and appetizing smell of fresh sea-fish broiling in the ashes. For Wise Jan lay most of his spare time fishing out on a jutting rock, where the swirl of the Suck sent a back-spang of current careering anglewise along the northern edge of the Fiara.

"Jack," said Wat, as they came in, "I think that we should get away from the island as soon as we can."

"And has it taken you all this time to come to that conclusion?" cried old Jack, without looking up, plowtering discontentedly in the red embers with a burned stick.

"The new moon will now give us nearly three hours' light – enough for our purpose," said Wat, "and Wise Jan here can help us to put our old boat in readiness."

"Why not the new and brave one you hid in the water-passage? I suppose it is there in safety still?" said Scarlett.

"Aye," replied Wat, "but unless you want to be cast away the second time in the tumble of the Suck, you will most carefully leave that boat alone; for the current races by at either end, and except for those who have spent their lives in piloting their way through the intricate passages of the reefs and know their every glide and swirl, it is impossible to reach the open sea from the Sound of Suliscanna."

"How then?" grumbled Scarlett, for these things of the sea were not in his province, and he resented the reference of any question to him. "Let those that stomach cold salt-water agree about the road over it. My parish begins when there is solid earth beneath my feet."

Wat answered him clearly, scoring the points on his fingers as he made them.

"First we have the old boat, which on my first coming hither I found floating in the northern bay and brought ashore. Well, we must get Jan to rig her with the mast out of the larger boat in the water-cave, and equip her with the oars out of that also. Then, since the Suck sweeps past us on the east, and there is a strong tide-race to the west, we must steer our way directly out from the northern shore of Fiara, which is indeed the only direction in which the sea is anyway clear. We shall keep steadily on till we find the waters to the east calm and practicable, for the fretting of the tide on the shoreward skerries cannot last long out on the open sea."

Scarlett nodded his head. It was all right, he thought. He was ready to adventure in any direction which did not involve another wrestle with the unfriendly and unwholesome Suck of Suliscanna.

"This very night," quoth Wat, to close the discussion, "will I swim over and bring back the needful things for our departure in the boat itself. It is a pity, indeed, that we cannot take her with us."

Kate looked at him with wonderful changeful eyes, a lingering regard that dwelt tenderly on him. She said nothing with her tongue, but her eyes spoke for her. They were of the tenderest brown immediately about the dark pupils, then of a clear hazel, which merged into the most sweet and translucent gray, like the first dawn of a May morning.

"Take care of yourself for me," they said; "you are all my earthly treasure."

For this is the universal language of loving women's eyes in times of danger, ever since Eve clave to her husband in the night solace outside the wall of Paradise, and they twain became one flesh.

CHAPTER XXXIX

SATAN SPIES OUT PARADISE

As he had expected, Wat found the boat safely anchored in its rocky haven, where the water lay dead and still as in a tank. He drew himself on board, dripping salt-water all over the inside from his lithe body and scanty clothing. He was busying himself loosening the oars and mast, which had been tied along the side, when he heard, faintly but unmistakably, the sound of a human voice speaking.

At first Wat, busy with his work, paid no heed. He supposed it must be Scarlett talking to Wise Jan, and idly wondered why he spoke so loud. But in a moment he remembered that the rocks of Fiara and the deep Sound lay between him and his companions.

Yet quite clearly and continuously some one was certainly speaking, and at no great distance either. As before, the cave was not quite dark, for the moon had risen, and the boat lay close by the entrance which gave upon the Sound. Wat hastened to climb up on one of the rocky walls which formed the edge of the tiny haven in which the vessel floated. The water-way which constituted the floor of the cave slept black beneath, a long, almost invisible heave passing up from without, which was just the great Atlantic Sea breathing in its sleep. But so smooth were these undulations that hardly a swish on the projections of the walls told of their passage. Outward from where Wat stood the great lane of water gradually brightened to the huge square of the sea-door. Inward it grew blacker and more gloomy, till the young man's eye could not trace it farther into the solemn bosom of the rock. It was out of this inner gloom that the voice was proceeding.

Presently the single voice became two, and Wat could hear the words of one speaker, who spoke low and almost delicately, and then of another who more gruffly and briefly replied. From the darkness of the inner cavern a new sound was borne to Wat's ear – the panting of men in exertion, and the little splash made by the swimmer as he changes position, or when a wavelet, running diagonally, laps against his breast. It is an unmistakable sound, and yet it is no louder than the plunge of a leaping fish that falls back again into the water.

Wat lay motionless on his ledge. He had lifted the moorings from the stern of the boat in the rock basin behind him, and he could hear that she had swung round and that her timbers were rasping gently against the stone pier. Wat prayed that the swimmers might not hear the noise. The uneasy water pavement of the cavern swayed beneath him with measured undulations, glimmering with that pale phosphorescence which is the deceiving ghost of true illumination. Yet it was light enough for Wat to observe the heads of the men who swam, as they emerged into its glow out of the perfect darkness of the inner cave.

There was one who led, swimming a good half-dozen strokes in advance of the others.

"We cannot be far from the north gate now, surely," said a voice, which Wat instantly recognized as that of Barra, "if the cailleach hath told the truth and her man did really find his way to the island of Fiara by this passage."

The man who swam in the middle of the three who followed Barra only grunted in reply. Wat could see the shapeless round of his head but dimly; nevertheless, he knew that it was the featureless, scarred visage of Haxo the Bull which glared like a death's-head above the water in the wake of his arch-enemy. And he had no doubt that on either side of him swam the Calf and the Killer, the other members of that noble trinity.