"THE GENTLEMAN INSTANTLY ATTACKED THEM FURIOUSLY"
"THE GENTLEMAN INSTANTLY ATTACKED THEM FURIOUSLY"
The fellows about her shrank back and drew their short sailors' "whingers." But the gentleman instantly attacked them furiously with his long sword, for Haxo and his companions had fled at the first sound of Barra's voice, while the two who had arrived later were engaging Kate's deliverer. Their short swords, however, were no match for the officer's cavalry blade. The weapon of one presently clattered upon the pavement while hiscomrade ran off down an alley, holding his side as if he had been wounded.
Then, putting his left arm firmly about her, and holding his sword bare in the other, Kate's rescuer urged her to mount quickly up the street.
"They may return," he said; "they may bring others with them, my lady, in which case I might not be able to protect you, or even to serve you otherwise than by dying for you, which very gladly I would do."
Now Kate desired much to walk by herself, finding the arm about her waist discomposing, and having also the market-basket to carry; but it seemed at the time a thing impossible to say to a man who had just saved her life—or, at the least, had preserved her from the hands of many cruel ruffians.
In this manner they reached in safety the wider spaces of the upper streets, where Kate gladly saw the town's officers marching hither and thither with their halberds ported and their pistols in their belts.
Then she disengaged herself deftly from her protector's circling arm.
"I thank you, sir," she said, very gratefully, "for your so great and timely kindness to me. I shall never forget it; nor yet will my father, whose name is Roger McGhie of Balmaghie, in the country of Scotland, ever forget your gentle courtesy to his daughter in the land of her exile."
The stranger doffed his bonnet and bowed low.
"I also am of your nation, fair mistress," said he. "In my own country I am called Murdo, Lord of Barra and the Small Isles; but now it is mine honor alone that is great, for I also am an exile for truth's sake, and must serve a foreign master, as you see."
And he touched with a certain noble humility his orange cloak and the prince's badge and motto that were upon it.
Kate bowed in turn, and her eyes expressed a warmer interest than she had yet shown.
"My Lord of Barra," she said, "I have heard of you and of your distinguished services and position. I am the more grateful to one so noble for protecting a poor maid and an exile from insult."
"It is my privilege and my very great good fortune," said he, again lifting his hat with more than ordinary deference. "Let us walk together to your home; you lodge with your cousin of Earlstoun, do you not?"
"Yes; but how may my Lord Barra know of that?" said Kate, in some bewilderment.
Her companion smiled complacently.
"Though I be but an exile, yet, by the prince's special favor, I am set in charge of the good behavior of this turbulent city, wherein it is my duty to know everything. This morning it chanced that I was on a tour of inspection in the worst and most dangerous parts, when it was my hap to be able to render you a very slight service."
Barra called a porter and bade him carry Kate's basket and walk behind them; but this that proud lass would not allow, whereupon the provost-marshal dismissed the man with a movement of his hand. And so in earnest talk the pair approached the entering in of the street of Zaandpoort.
It so happened that Wat Gordon, released from his duty in the camp, had hastened homeward as fast as he could, hoping that he might be in time to help Kate with the preparation of the vegetables, and in especial with the salad; for it had become his utmost pleasure to do for her the most common and menial offices. As he arrived at the end of the street he saw Kate coming towards him, apparently lost in friendly intercourse with a tall officer of the prince's household. He stood transfixed.
Presently she paused at the door and, looking across, she saw him.
"Wat!" she cried, eagerly, "come hither!"
For she wished to tell him of her adventure.
But facing about and standing straight as an arrow, Walter Gordon (being an exceedingly foolish person) saluted the officer in the orange cloak and marched past as though he had not heard. Whereat Kate, mightily offended at his rudeness, asked my Lord of Barra to do her friend Mistress Maisie Gordon and herself the honor of entering their poor rooms.
"For it is not needful that those who are of the same country and cause should stand on punctilios."
So because of the pride of this stiff-necked Wat, my Lord of Barra found footing in the street of Zaandpoort; for pride ofttimes breeds more and worse things than many sins called deadlier.
*****
Before Scarlett and Wat issued forth from the presence of the prince on the day appointed for the interview, Wat had received a commission in his own regiment, while Scarlett was nominated instructor to the newly formed companies of exiles, called first Buchan's and afterwards Egerton's Foot.
In addition to all this, Wat had not forgotten to represent to the prince the case of his cousin Will, and had reminded him of the great services he had rendered the cause in Scotland; to which William of Orange had listened with seeming pleasure, but with regard to Will Gordon's promotion in the corps of the Covenant he had made no promises.
It was, nevertheless, with a proud and happy heart that Wat returned to his cousin's lodgings in the street of Zaandpoort. He had seen the prince and found him well disposed. Even his enemy Barra had been able to do nothing against him, and if their feet were already climbing the lower rungs of the ladder of fortune, he felt that in some measure it was owing to his courage and address.
All that day Wat's heart kept time to a new and unwonted tune. The streets had never seemed so smiling, the faces of the children never so mirthful. The commonwealth of things was manifestly in excellent repair that afternoon in the city of Amersfort. Lochinvar hummed a jaunty marching-stave as he strode towards the low door in Zaandpoort Street, while his heart beat fast to think that in a moment more he would be looking into those wondrous eyes whose kindness or cruelty had now become to him as life or death.
As he went a little softly up the stairs, he heard above a noise of cheerful converse. An unknown man's voice spoke high and clear among the others. The lighter tones of women intermingled with it, pleasantly responsive. For a moment those within did not in the instancy of their discourse hear Wat's summons. At last Maisie opened the door, astonished that any one should knock at inner chamber-port, and as Wat entered he saw, sitting in his own accustomed place, his hat on the table, his sword unslung for ease, his enemy the Lord of Barra. The provost-marshal was talking easily and familiarly to Kate, who sat on the low window-seat leaning a little forward, with interest written clearly on every line of her face. She was nursing her knee between her clasped palms with that quaint and subtle grace which had often gone to Wat's heart. Her dark eyes rested, not upon his incoming, of which she appeared to be for the moment unconscious, but upon the face of the speaker.
Wat and Barra submitted (it could not be called more) to Maisie's introduction—Wat with sullen blackness of countenance and the slightest inclination of his head, Barra with smiling patience, as though by the very irony of circumstances it had chanced to him to be introduced to his stable-boy.
Kate rose and took Wat's hand a moment in kindly fashion, though with eyes a little downcast, being notyet ready quite to forget his rudeness upon the street. But immediately she went back to her seat in order to listen to the conclusion of the story which Barra had been relating. It concerned the loyalty of the Highland clans to their chiefs, and as Barra told of their sacrifices, a genuine pleasure lightened in his dark face, his eyes glittered, and a new life breathed through his whole form. For pride in the loyalty of his clan was the selfish man's one enthusiasm.
Maisie sat down with her sewing close to where Wat stood moping and bending his brows, and, noting his brow of constraint and gloom, she set herself lovingly to cheer him.
"We have had good news to-day," she said, smiling pleasantly at him—"news that William does not know yet. See!" she added, handing him a parchment from the table with heightened color, for she had been married but six months, and her William was the pivot on which the universe revolved.
It was a commission as captain in the Covenant regiment in favor of William Gordon, called younger, of Earlstoun. Wat continued to look at it in amazement. It was what he had asked for from William of Orange that day without obtaining an answer.
"My Lord of Barra had it from the prince's own hand. He says that the stadtholder has long marked the address of my husband, and hath only delayed to reward it lest the short space he has been with the colors should arouse the jealousy of his comrades."
A spark of fury burned up suddenly in Wat's eyes.
"Is the paper genuine, think you?" he asked, loudly enough for all to hear.
Maisie looked up quickly, astonished, not so much at his words as by the fierce, abrupt manner of his speech.
"Genuine!" she said, in astonishment. "Why, my Lord Barra brought it himself. It is signed by his ownhand and issued in the name of the prince. Why do you ask if it be genuine?"
"I ask," cried Lochinvar, in the same fiercely offensive tone, "because the only document which I have ever seen bearing that signature and issued in the name of the prince was a forgery, and as such was repudiated two days later by my Lord of Barra."
The words rang clearly and unmistakably through the room. Doubtless Barra heard them, and Kate also, for a deep flush of annoyance mounted slowly to her neck, touched with rose the ivory of her cheek, and faded out again, leaving her with more than her former paleness. But Barra never stopped a moment in the full, easy current of his narration. He continued to let fall his sentences with precisely the same cool, untroubled deliberation, fingering meanwhile the prince's signet-ring, which he habitually wore on his hand. Kate almost involuntarily moved a little nearer to him and fixed her eyes the more earnestly on his face, because she felt that Wat's words were a deliberate insult intended for her deliverer of the preceding day.
Wat on his part pushed his chair noisily back from the table, and rapped nervously and defiantly with his knuckles on the board.
"There is not a man in my wild western isles," Barra's voice was heard going on, evenly and calmly, "who would not die for his chief, giving his life as readily as a platter of drammoch—not a poor unlearned cotter who would not send his family to the death to save the honor of the clan from the least stain, or the life of the chief from any shadow of danger. The true clansman can do anything for his chief—"
"Except tell the truth," burst in Walter Gordon, fiercely.
Barra paused a moment and looked calmly at the interrupter. Then, turning a little more squarely to Kateand his hostess, he continued his speech without betraying the least annoyance.
"He will do anything for his chief which does not involve the loss of his honor and his standing in the clan."
"Does this your noble Highland honor include treachery, spying, and butchery?" cried Wat, now speaking directly to his enemy.
"It includes good manners in a lady's presence, sir," said Barra, calmly.
"Do these your clansmen of honor and courtesy wear butchers' knifes in their belts, and go by the name of Haxo the Bull, the Calf, and the Killer?"
Barra spread his hands abroad with a French gesture of helplessness which was natural to him, and which expressed his inability to comprehend the vagaries and fancies of a person clearly out of his mind. Then, without betraying the least annoyance, he turned suavely to Kate, and began to tell her of the new ambassadors from Austria who, with a great retinue, had that day arrived at the court of the Prince of Orange.
Wat rose with his hand on his sword. "Cousin Maisie," he said, "I am not a man of politic tricks nor specious concealments. I give you fair warning that I know this man. I tell him to his face that I denounce him for a traitor, a conspirator, a murderer. I find Murdo of Barra a guest in this house, and I do what I can to protect those I love from so deadly an acquaintance—the very shadow of whose name is death."
"Protect! You forget, Cousin Walter," returned Maisie, indignantly, standing up very white and determined—"you forget that I have a husband who is entirely able to protect me. And you forget also that this is his house, not yours. Moreover, if you cannot suffer to meet my friends here as one guest meets another, it is entirely within your right to go where you will only meet with those of whom you are pleased to approve."
Here Walter snatched suddenly at the bonnet which had been lying on the floor: but the indignant little lady of the house in Zaandpoort Street had not yet said all her say.
"And, moreover," she said, "so long as I am mistress of a hovel, neither you nor any other shall intrude your brawls and quarrels upon those whom I choose to invite to my house."
"You choose between us, then?" cried Wat, holding his head high, his face as colorless as a sheet of paper.
"If you desire to put it so—yes. I choose between a man of courtesy and a silly, hectoring boy. I choose, cousin mine, not to give you the right to select my guests for me."
Wat turned to Kate. The blood had now ebbed from his lips, and left them gray. His eyes seemed in a short tale of moments to have sunk deep into his face.
"And you?" he said, more calmly than before, looking at the maid of his love.
The girl trembled like a leaf on an autumn gossamer; nevertheless, she answered firmly enough: "I am but a guest in this house, but so long as I abide here the friends of my hostess are my friends!"
Wat Gordon bowed low with stateliest courtesy, first to his cousin Maisie, then to Kate McGhie, and lastly to his rival.
"I shall have the honor of sending you a communication in the morning," he said, looking the councillor of the prince between the eyes.
Barra sat still on his chair, looking Wat over with the same calmly amused contempt he had shown throughout. "Ah," he replied, nodding his head, "perhaps it might be as well to let the—the application come in the usual way—through my chamberlain."
And he was still smiling as Wat Gordon strode down the stairs with anger burning coldly white on his face, and all hell raging in his heart.
Barra turned to Kate to continue his story, but her place was vacant. The girl had inexplicably vanished from the room before Wat's foot had even passed the threshold. She lay now on the little white bed in her own room, her whole frame shaken with sobs, and the hot, bitter tears raining down on the pillow.
Then, for the first time, she knew in her own heart that she was face to face with great unreasoning love, which could neither be banished nor disowned.
"Oh, why," she sobbed, "was he so foolish and wicked? Why did Maisie grow of a sudden so hard and cruel to him? Why must things turn out thus deadly wrong, when they might just as easily have gone right?"
She buried her face in the pillow, and whispered her conclusion to the fine linen of its coverture upon which her tears were falling.
"Yet I love him—yes, I love him more than ever for it!" she said, and sank her head deeper, as if to hide her love from her own most secret sight.
Wat staggered a little as he walked down the street of Zaandpoort. He felt somewhat like a bullock that has been felled, yet which for the moment escapes with life. The air had grown suddenly thin and cold, as it had been difficult to breathe. He drew his cloak about him and shivered.
"Well," he raged, "that at least is ended! They have done with me—made their choice. I that stood by them in many bad, old days am cast off for a rogue and a scoundrel—because, forsooth, he is an earl and a prince's councillor. Were I but come to my rights, they would not treat me thus! But, because I am only poor Wat Gordon of the Douglas Regiment, I must be grateful for any dog's treatment."
As Wat grew to believe his own silly windy words, he held his head a little higher. And into the poor, angry, foolish boy's heart the devil cast his baited hook. Pride took hold of Wat, and the thought of revenge.
"But, after all, am I not Walter Gordon of Lochinvar," he said, as he strode along, heeding none, "a gentleman at least, and now, in spite of them all, an officer also? If mine own folk and kin think nothing of me in the little lodgings of Zaandpoort Street, I can show them that there are places more famous, where others will make Wat Gordon welcome for his own sake."
At that moment a shouting reveller ruffling it along the street recalled to his mind that he was in the neighborhoodof the famous Hostelry of the Coronation, where nightly during the stay of the army at Amersfort all the young bloods of the allied forces met, and where (it was reported) brightest eyes shone across the wine goblet, and daintiest feet danced upon the polished floors. The Inn of the Coronation was held by mine host Sheffell. A score of times it had been closed by the city fathers, but, nevertheless, always with more or less carefully concealed intent of winking hard at its immediate reopening.
And all this was because the burgomeister and magnates of Amersfort looked upon the Inn of the Coronation as a safety-valve for the riotous blades of the city and camp.
"For," said the former to the more sapient of his corporation when he could be private with them, "if the young kerls go not to the Coronation and meet with their like—well, we are men and fathers. Like is it that we may have matters on our hands that shall trouble us more deeply. Worse were it if the rascals came rattling their spurs and tagging at the tails of our daughters and our wives."
So the sleep of mine host Sheffell, of the Hostel of the Coronation, was not disturbed by the fear of the city council.
Towards this famous (or, as it might be, infamous) house, therefore, Wat turned his steps. Often the men of his regiment had offered to conduct him thither, but till now Wat had steadfastly refused, with the laugh which meant that he had to do with metal more attractive. For in a camp it does not do to obtain a repute for a too ostentatious virtue.
But to-night Wat Gordon buckled his sword a little tighter, belted his silken orange sash closer about his new officer's coat, swung his cloak back in a more becoming fashion, twirled his mustache, passed his fingers lightly through his crisp, fair curls, and strode withjingle of huge cavalry spurs into the Hostel of the Coronation, through whose portals (safe it is to say) no more proper or desirable young man had passed that night.
Great Sheffell himself was on the watch, and greeted the young officer with profoundest courtesy. Wat vouchsafed him hardly a nod, but marched straight into a great crowded room, which hummed about him, riant with gay noise and the spangle of silver and glass.
The main guest-chamber of the Coronation was a long, fairly wide, white-panelled room, divided at the sides into more private compartments by curtains hung upon rows of pillars. The more favored guests sat at small tables in the alcoves, and were waited on by girls attired in scarlet blouse and short embroidered silk kirtle, whose dainty hose of orange and black twinkled underneath as they passed deftly to and fro with glass and platter.
As soon as Wat entered, and began to thread his way through the laughing press, he found himself greeted from this table and that, and many were the invitations showered upon him to make one of some jocund company. But Wat only shook his head smilingly, and made his way steadily to the head of the room as if he had some appointment to keep there.
Nevertheless, he sat down listlessly enough at an unoccupied table, and a pretty maid, in a dress daintier and fresher than that of the other attendants, instantly stood beside him with her hands clasped modestly before her.
"I wait my lord's commands," she said, in excellent French.
Without giving the matter any consideration, Wat ordered a bottle of old Rhenish, and sat back to contemplate the scene at his ease. Officers of every regiment in the services of the States-General and of its allies were there, young attachés of the embassies, stray princelings of the allied German duchies; while scattered among thesewere to be seen a parti-colored crowd of ladies with flower-decked hair, lavish of shoulder, opulent of charm.
Presently the pretty maid brought Wat his bottle of Rhenish, ancient and cobwebbed. She decanted it carefully, standing close by his shoulder, so that a subtle suggestion of feminine proximity affected the young man strangely. She poured out a full measure of the scented vintage into a huge green glass on which tritons gambolled and sea-nymphs writhed.
"You have, perchance, no one to drink with you?" she said, giving him a glance out of her large and lustrous eyes.
"Truly," replied Wat, "I am alone!"
And the sadness of his life seemed to culminate in a kind of mimic and desperate isolation as he spoke.
"Then," said the girl, "may I not drink first to your beautiful eyes, my captain, and then, if you will, to our better acquaintance?"
She lifted the glass to her lips, tasted it as a bird does, and presented it to Walter with the daintiest gesture.
"Your name?" he said, looking at her with a certain tolerant and almost passive interest.
"I am called 'the Little Marie!'" she smiled; "I have been wellnigh a week in the Hostel of the Coronation, and not yet have I seen any to compare with you, my lord captain of the fair locks."
With a certain childish abandon, and a freedom still more than half innocent, Marie seated herself upon the arm of the great chair into which Wat had thrown himself upon his entrance. Her dainty foot dangled over the carven finial, almost touching the ribbons at Walter's knee with its silver buckled slipper of the mode of Paris. Marie's hand rested lightly on the small curls at the back of his neck, till Walter grew vaguely restive under the caressing fingers. Yet because he was in a great andthronged room humming with company, where none took any notice of him or his companion, each being intent on playing out his own game, the uneasy feeling soon passed away.
Only now and again, as the Rhenish sank in the bottle and the hand of the Little Marie took wider sweeps and paused more caressingly among his blonde hair, a thought awoke not unpleasantly in Wat's bosom.
"They have cast me out of their home and friendship. They have preferred a traitor. But I will let them see that there is pleasure in the world yet."
And his arm went of its own accord about the waist of the Little Marie.
*****
It seemed to be but a moment after (though it might have been an hour) that Wat looked up. A hush had fallen suddenly upon the briskly stirring din of the Hostel of the Coronation. Walter's eyes instantly caught those of a man attired in the uniform of the provost-marshal of the city. There was a cold smile of triumph on the face which met his. It was Barra, and he touched with his arm the man who stood beside him. Wat turned a little to look past the curtain which partly surrounded his table and alcove, and there, over the wide gauzy sleeves of the Little Marie, he encountered the grave and reproachful regard of his cousin, William Gordon of Earlstoun.
Wat started to his feet with a half-formed idea of going forward to explain something, he knew not what. But ere he had disengaged himself from the great chair, on the arm of which perched the Little Marie, an angry thought, born of pride and fostered by the heady antiquity of the cobwebbed Rhenish, drew him back again into his place. A kind of desperate defiance chilled him into a blank and sudden calmness, which boded no good either to himself or to any who should oppose him.Besides which, the circumstances were certainly difficult of explanation.
"They cast me out, and then immediately they follow after to spy upon me. Shall I utter a word of excuse only to be met with the sneer of unbelief? Am I not an officer of dragoons? Also, am I not of age, and able to choose my company as well as they? As Wat Gordon never was a prayer-monger, so neither will he now be a hypocrite."
He glanced not uncomplaisantly at the Little Marie, who hummed a careless tune and swung her pretty foot against his knee, happily unconscious of his trouble. Perhaps the Rhenish had taken her back again to the green slopes about her native village, and to her more innocent childhood.
"Another bottle of wine," he cried, with a heady kind of half-boyish defiance.
"But you have not yet finished this," she answered. "Nor, indeed," she added, with a roguish smile, "even paid for it."
Wat threw a pair of gold pieces on the table.
"One for the wine and one to buy you a new pair of buckled shoes, Little Marie," he said.
"Then for luck you must drink out of the one I wear," she said, and forthwith she poured a thimbleful of the wine into the shoe, which she deftly slipped from the foot which had swung by his ribbon-knot of blue-and-white.
"Pledge me!" she cried, daring him to a match of folly, and she held the curious beaker close to his chin. Wat was conscious that his cousin stood grave and stern by the door, and that on Barra's face there hovered a strangely satisfied smile. But something angry and hot within him drove him recklessly deeper and deeper. He had no pleasure in the thing. It was as apples of Sodom in his mouth, exceeding bitter fruit; but at least heknew that he was cutting every tie that bound him to the street of Zaandpoort—to those who had despised and rejected him.
He lifted the shoe of the Little Marie in the air.
"To the owner of the prettiest foot in the world!" he cried, and pledged her.
Four men who had come in after my Lord of Barra now sat themselves down at the table nearest to Wat. The Little Marie, having recovered her slipper and wiped it coquettishly with the tassels of Wat's sash, somewhat reluctantly went away to bring the second bottle of Rhenish.
During her absence Lochinvar remained behind, blowing with all his might upon the dying coals of his anger, and telling himself that he had done nothing worthy of reproach, when suddenly John Scarlett plumped himself down into the chair opposite him. He had been in the inn all the time, but only now he had come near Walter Gordon.
"Lochinvar," he said, "'tis a sight for sore eyes to see you here! What has happened to the Covenant that you have left the prayer-meeting and come to the Hostel of the Coronation?"
"Jack," cried Wat, "you know me better than that. Never was Walter Gordon a great lover of the Covenant all the days of his life."
"You ran gayly enough with the hare, then, at any rate!" answered John Scarlett, provokingly.
"Nay," replied Wat, "I was hunted by the pack, it is true, but that was because of the dead stroke I gave His Grace the Duke of Wellwood."
"And the beginning of that—was it not some matter of doctrine or of the kirk?" asked Scarlett, though he knew the truth well enough.
The Rhenish had been mounting to Wat's head, and his heart had grown gay and boastful.
"Nay," he cried; "very far indeed from that. 'Twas rather a matter of the favors of my lady the Duchess."
One of the men at the next table looked quickly over at Wat's words, and, indeed there seemed to be but little talk among them. Contrariwise, they sat silently drinking their wine, and as it had been, listening to the talk of Wat Gordon and his companion.
Presently the Little Marie came daintying and smiling back with the wine, deftly weaving her way among the revellers, and as she went by the neighboring table one of the men at the side on which she tried to pass made free to set his arm about her.
"Change about, my lass," he said; "'tis the turn of this table to have your pretty company. By my faith, they have given us a maid as plain-visaged as a Gouda cheese."
The Little Marie gave a quick cry, and Wat half started to his feet and laid his hand upon his sword; but Scarlett dropped a heavy palm upon his shoulder and forced him back again into his seat. In a moment the girl had adroitly twisted herself from the clutch of the man, and, in addition, had left the marks of her nails on his cheek.
"Take that, my rascal," she cried, "and learn that spies have no dealings with honest maids."
"Good spirit, i' faith!" said Scarlett, nodding his head approvingly; but the Little Marie, coming to them with heightened color and angry eyes, did not again set herself on the arm of Wat Gordon's chair. Instead she drew a high stool to the side of the table, midway between Wat and Scarlett. Then she placed her arm upon the table-cloth, and leaned her chin upon the palms of her hands.
"Abide by us," said Walter, who could not bear that so fair and light a thing should be left to the ill-guidedmercies of such a mangy pack as were drinking at the next table.
The second supply of Rhenish, with the capable assistance of Scarlett, sank apace in its tall flask, and at each glass Wat's voice mounted higher and higher. He could be heard all over the room declaiming upon the merits of Scottish men, offering to defend with his life the virtue and beauty of Scottish maids, or in case none should be willing to call these in question, then he was equally ready to draw sword on behalf of the dignity and incorruptibility of Scottish judges.
The guest-room of the Coronation was for a while disposed to listen with amused wonder. Presently the four men at the table near Wat became five. The new-comer proved to be a short-necked, red-faced, deeply-scarred man, dressed in the uniform of the provost-marshal's guards. The wine in Wat's brain prevented him for the time from recognizing his ancient enemy, Haxo the Bull; but Haxo the Bull nevertheless it was.
Scarlett was now most anxious to get Wat away in safety. There was also a gleam of almost piteous appeal in the eyes of the Little Marie.
"My captain," she said, bending over and laying her hand on his sleeve, "it is high time for you to go to your quarters; you can come and see me again in the morning if you will."
For Wat was now talking louder than ever, and beating for emphasis upon the table with his hand.
"And I repeat that whoever casts a slur upon the virtue and beauty of a Scots maid has to settle accounts with Wat Gordon of Lochinvar—"
The men at the nearest table had also begun talking loudly, and the voice of Haxo pierced the din.
"I tell you the girl is safely my master's meat, and she is a dainty filly enough. Her name is Kate McGhie, and she is a land-owner's daughter somewhere in the barrenland of Scots. My lord bought her good-will quickly enough with a gay present for herself and a commission for her gossip's loutish husband—trust Barra for that. He is never laggard in his affairs with women."
Wat Gordon was on his feet in an instant. The Little Marie instinctively shrank aside from the white fierce face which she encountered. It looked like the countenance of some one whom she had never seen. The young man fairly spurned the table at which he had been sitting, and with a single spring he was over the next and at the breast of Haxo the Bull.
"Villain, you lie in your throat," he shouted, "and I will kill you for your lie! 'Tis false as the lying tongue which I will presently tear out of your foul mouth!"
The four men rose simultaneously and drew, some of them their swords and the others their daggers. Wat would instantly have been stabbed among them but that the Little Marie, dashing forward like a hawk, threw her arms about the nearest of his foes, for a minute pinioning his hands to his side.
Then Scarlett, with a sweep of his sword, leaped on the table in the midst of them, crying "Fair play! Stand back there, all of you who do not want to be spitted!"
Presently, finding Wat's grasp relax on his throat as he reached for his weapon, Haxo shook himself free and drew the hanger which, in honor of his advancement, he wore instead of his butcher's knife. Wat had neither room nor yet time to draw his long sword; but with quick baresark fury he caught up by the leg the heavy oaken chair on which Haxo had been sitting, and twirling it over his head like a staff, he struck the brawny butcher with the carved back of it fair on the temple, almost crushing in his cheek. The Bull dropped to the floor without a groan.
Then there ensued a battle fierce and fell in that uppercorner of the great room of the Coronation. There Wat stood at bay with the oaken chair in his hand, while Scarlett's long sword turned every way, and even the Little Marie, long unaccustomed to courtesy, showed her fidelity to the salt of kindness she had tasted. She crouched low behind the fighters, almost on her knees, and waited for a chance to strike upward with the dagger she held in her hand. But the long room swarmed black with their foes. The remaining four had already been reinforced by half a dozen others, and the way to the door seemed completely blocked. Then it was that Scarlett raised the rallying cry, "Scots to me! Hither to me, blue bonnets all!"
And through the press were thrust the burly shoulders of Sergeant Davie Dunbar and two of his comrades. All might now have gone differently but for the madness working in the brain of Wat of Lochinvar. For the insult to his sweetheart's good name, uttered by Haxo, had made him resolve to kill every man at the table who had heard the blasphemous slander.
"Arrest him!" the provost-marshal's men cried. "He has murdered Haxo!"
"Die, rogues and liars all!" shouted Wat, rushing at them in yet fiercer wrath.
And without further parley he brought his chair down upon the shoulder of the nearest, who sank on his face stunned with the mighty blow.
"Good Scots to the rescue!" cried Scarlett, as was his custom engaging two men at a time with his point and easily keeping them in play.
So in this fashion, Wat leading and striking all down in his way with a kind of desperate fury, Scarlett and Davie Dunbar, with the other two Scots, pressing as closely after him as they could, the small compact band made its way steadily and slowly towards the outgate of the Hostel of the Coronation.
"Lord help us all!" cried the more terrified of their opponents; "let us get out of the way of these praying blue bonnets when they are angered."
For the floor began to be sprinkled with groaning men who had dropped from the blades of the outlanders, and with stunned and maimed men stricken down by the fierce vigor of Wat's barbaric onslaught.
Yet, in spite of all, it was a long time before the steadfast five could force their way to the street.
By this time Wat held his chair by its only surviving leg, and the blades of the small Scots phalanx dripped blood into their own basket hilts. The street without was packed with townspeople, and even the watch could not make way to apprehend them. When the Scots finally came forth into the night it might, indeed, have gone very ill with them had it not been that a patrol of Frisian horse chanced to pass at that moment in front of the Hostel of the Coronation.
To them Scarlett cried out in their own country speech (with which he was somewhat acquainted), "Help, there, for certain true soldiers of the prince cruelly beset by townsfolk!"
Now this was the very wisest word he could have spoken. For whatever private discontents they might cherish, all the soldiers of the camp were of the faction of their general when it came to choosing between the Prince of Orange and the turbulent and rebellious municipality of Amersfort. The patrol swiftly opened out, and presently enclosed the five Scots between their files. Thus they were able to pass safely through the howling mob, which, however, made ugly rushes at them as they went.
Presently they came to the headquarters of the portion of the force domiciled in the city.
Wat, who for a time had been entirely sobered by the fierce excitement of battle, now again felt his head reel with the sudden, sharp chill of the night air.
Yet when the prisoners were confronted with the officer of the night, he at once stepped forward and, without hesitation, assumed the sole responsibility for the affair.
"I fear I have slain a man—or, mayhap, more than one," he said; "but these, my friends, have had no part in the quarrel. They but assisted me to fight my way out."
"Your name and regiment, sir?" said the officer in charge, civilly enough.
"I am Walter Gordon, captain in Douglas's regiment of Dragoons," replied Walter, readily enough.
"Let Captain Gordon be taken to the military prison and there kept in the safest cell," interrupted the clear, high voice of Barra. He had entered unobserved, having followed the patrol along the street. The officer of the night saluted the high councillor of the prince and present provost-marshal of the camp and city of Amersfort.
Walter was therefore promptly delivered to the officer and file who had been sent to escort him, and in a moment he went out with them into the night.
"Were they souljers or civilians ye murthered, for sure?" asked the officer, as they marched along the street. He spoke the pleasant tongue of Ireland in a soft, far-reaching whisper.
"Townsfolk," returned Wat; "all except one hulking scoundrel of a provost-marshal's man!"
"More power to ye," said the Irishman, promptly. "Give me the grip of your hand—and, by my sowl, I'll give ye a chance to run for it at the next corner."
But Wat declined the obliging offer of the good-hearted Irishman.
"I thank you with all my heart," he said. "It is kindly meant. But I prefer to stand my trial. Things can't be worse with me than they are!"
"Faith, it's you that knows, my son," said the Irishman;"but to Patrick Ryan's thinking a long hempen necktie, swung elegantly over a beam, might make things a deal worse for ye!"
And in a minute more the iron gate of the military prison of Amersfort had shut-to upon Wat Gordon.
Barra and Will Gordon returned together to the lodgings in the street of Zaandpoort. There was a sinister look of inexpressible triumph on the dark face of my Lord of Barra. When they reached home Will Gordon threw himself silently, face downward, on the oak settle; for there arose in his heart the memory of those days, not so long ago, when he and Wat had slept under one plaid among the heather on the moors of Scotland. And the tears stood in his eyes for the thing which he had seen that night.
On their way back Barra had bubbled over with laughing sneers at the downfall of his immaculate and virtuous cousin, but Will Gordon had paced along sad and silent by his side. Ancient loyalty kept him without words, yet in his heart he condemned Lochinvar most bitterly, far more intensely indeed even than Barra.
Maisie and Kate were sitting busily sewing at their delicate white seams when the two men entered. The little Dutch lamp had been carefully trimmed, and the whole room radiated cosiest comfort. As was her wont, Kate's place was by the window, where she sat looking at her work, keeping a somewhat cold and white face steadfastly upon the monotonous business of needle and thread.
Maisie sat sad and a little reminiscent of recent tears by the lamp. Her eyes were moist, and she did not lookat all in the direction of Barra and her husband, as they entered.
A sense of strain in the air paralyzed conversation after the first greetings had been interchanged. These were loud and eager on the side of Barra, almost inaudible on the part of Kate and Maisie; and as for Will Gordon, he lay where he had flung himself so suddenly down upon the long oaken couch.
"Adventures are to the adventurous, and to-night we have adventured indeed," at last began my Lord of Barra, speaking directly to his hostess. "Your husband, with much kindness, accompanied me on my rounds of inspection, and, among other curious discoveries, it was made entirely plain to us why our polite acquaintance Lochinvar was in such a hurry to leave us."
Barra paused with a certain pleasure and appreciation of his own wit in his voice. But no one spoke in the room. Will Gordon, indeed, gave an inarticulate groan and plunged heavily over upon the settle with his face to the wall. Maisie turned her back a little more upon the speaker, while Kate bent lower upon her sewing, as if the dim light had suddenly made it harder for her to see the stitches.
"And if you hesitate to believe the extraordinary things I have to tell you, my friend here, Captain Gordon of the Covenanting regiment, will tell you where, in the discharge of my duty as provost-marshal of the camp, it was our business to penetrate, and in what company and in what circumstances we found your cousin of Lochinvar."
"We do not want to hear. It was all our fault!" said Maisie, turning suddenly full upon the speaker. Unconsciously to himself, Barra had been using a somewhat pompous and judicial tone, as though he were pronouncing judgment upon a hardened offender.
At Maisie's words, the provost-marshal instantly saterect in his chair. He was exceedingly astonished. A few hours before he had seen these two women stern almost to severity over a mere breach of good manners. He could not imagine that now they would not utterly reject and condemn such a reprobate as Wat Gordon had proved himself to be. He felt that he must surely have been misunderstood, so he proceeded to make his meaning clear.
"But I tell you plainly, my ladies," Barra continued, still more impressively, "that your husband and I found your cousin of Lochinvar at the Hostel of the Coronation, of which you may have heard—there spending his living with harlots, flaunting their endearments in a public place, and afterwards brawling with the meanest and rudest boors of the camp."
"And I do not wonder!" cried Maisie Lennox, emphatically, "after the way he was used in this house, which ought to have been a home to him. William Gordon, I wonder how, as a Christian man, you could permit your cousin to be so used!" she continued, fiercely turning upon her husband and bursting into tears.
Will Gordon groaned inarticulately from the settle. He had not been present at the time, but he knew well that with women such a transparent subterfuge would avail him nothing.
"Why, Maisie," he began, speaking from the depths of the pillow, "did not you yourself—"
"I do not think," said Barra, looking over to Will, "that your wife understands that the Hostel of the Coronation is, of all the haunts of sin in this city of Amersfort, the vilest and the worst. The man who would make his good name a byword there is certainly unfit to have the honor of admission into a circle so gracious, into society so pure as that in which I first found him. I speak as the censor of the morals of the army, and also as one who has suffered many things for conscience' sakeand in order to deserve the praise of them that do well."
Kate looked up for the first time since Will and Barra had come in.
As the latter finished speaking he noticed that her eyes were very dark, and yet at the same time very bright. The black of the pupil had overspread the iris so that the whole eye at a distance appeared as dark as ink, but deep within the indignant light of a tragic love burned steadily, like a lamp in the night.
The girl spoke quickly and clearly, as if the words had been forced from her.
"Had I been so used at the only place I called 'home,' when I was a stranger in a strange land, I tell you all I should have gone straight to the Hostel of the Coronation—or worse, if worse might be!" she cried, indignantly.
"And so also would I!" cried Maisie, with still greater emphasis, sticking her needle viciously into the table and breaking it as she spoke.
The settle creaked as Will Gordon leaped to his feet.
"Silly women, ye ken not what ye say!" he said, sternly. "Be wise and plead rather with the man in whose hands our cousin's very life may lie, for the deeds of this black night."
"His life—his life!" cried, instantly, Maisie and Kate together.
The latter rose to her feet, letting all her white bravery of seamstressing slip unheeded to the ground. Maisie, on her part, turned a pale and tear-stained face eagerly up to her husband.
"Yes," said Barra, swiftly, eager to tell the story first, "it is true—his life; for Walter Gordon, being in company at the place I have mentioned with a light woman, brawled and insulted those who sat near him, offering to assert and defend her virtue at the sword's point.Then when he was withstood and threatened with arrest by my officers, as their duty was, he turned fiercely upon them and upon others, the supporters of law and order, and now he lies in prison awaiting trial formurder!"
Kate caught the table with her hand at the last terrible word, which Barra hissed out with concentrated fury and hatred.
"Is this true?" she said, in a low voice, making a great effort to regain her calmness. She turned to Will Gordon as she spoke.
"Nay," said Will, "indeed I know nothing of the cause of the quarrel. But certain it is that there has been a most fierce brawl, and that in the affray certain men have been grievously wounded, if not killed."
"And is our Wat in prison?" demanded Maisie, fiercely.
"He lies in the military prison of the city awaiting his trial by court-martial!" replied the provost.
Maisie turned her about and caught her husband by the braid of his coat.
"Go you to him at once—you must! Tell him it is all our fault—we have been unhappy and to blame, Kate and I—ask him to forgive."
And, being overwrought and strained, she put her head down on Will Gordon's breast and wept aloud.
Kate went to her and took her hand gently. And to her Maisie instantly turned, setting her husband aside with a pathetic little gesture of renunciation, as something which has been proven untrustworthy. Then, still leaning on Kate's shoulder, she passed slowly from the room. As Kate McGhie opened the door she flashed one glance, quick with measureless anger and contempt, back upon the two men who stood gazing after her. Then she passed out.
There was a long silence between the provost-marshal and his host after the women had disappeared.
At last Barra broke in upon the awkward pause with a laugh of scorn which ended with something like a sigh.
"Oh, women! women," he cried. "From what pits will ye not dig the clay to make you your gods!"
"He had been our friend so long, and in such bitter passes and desperate ventures," said Will Gordon, excusingly, speaking of Wat in a hushed voice almost as one would speak of the dead.
Barra shrugged his shoulders to intimate that the whole sex was utterly impossible of comprehension.
"Nevertheless, you will give our poor cousin your best word and offices to-morrow?" Will Gordon went on, anxiously.
"I shall see the prince in person," answered Barra, promptly, "and I shall make my endeavor to arrange that the prisoner shall not be tried by court-martial—so that nothing summary may take place, and no sentence be hastily or vindictively carried out."
Will Gordon blanched at the word "summary," which in the severely disciplined army of the States-General had but one meaning.
He conducted his guest to the door in silence. The moonlight was casting deep shadows in the high-gabled street of Zaandpoort and glittering on the pole-axes and muskets of the provost's guard who stood without, stamping their feet impatiently and waiting the appearance of their leader.
"Till to-morrow, then!" said Will Gordon, as he parted.
"Till to-morrow!" replied the provost-marshal, more heartily than he had yet spoken, giving him his hand.
But as he walked down the street towards the camp he smiled a smile from under the thin, drooping mustache which showed his teeth. They glittered white in the moonlight like a dog's.
The prison of the city of Amersfort stood at the corner of one of its most ancient streets, and the military portion of it exposed a long scarped wall to the public, broken only by a single line of small windows triply barred with iron stanchions of the thickness of a man's wrist. These windows were only separated from the street by a low wall and a strong but wide-meshed railing of wrought iron. In the large room of the jail, where only those prisoners were kept who were detained for slight offences, or who awaited trial, the unglazed squares of the window were large enough to admit of a pole and small basket being protruded, so that it should hang within reach of the passers-by. One of the inmates was appointed to stand with this curious fishing-rod in his hand, and the plaintive wail, "Remember the poor prisoners of the prince!" resounded all day along the ancient thoroughfare.
But Wat was too important a guest to be placed in this common room. By special direction of the provost-marshal he had a cell assigned to him in a tower only a few yards above the level of the street. His apartment had two windows, one of which being in the belly of the tower looked up and down the thoroughfare. He could see the passengers as they went to and fro, and if any had cared to stop he might even have spoken with them.
Wat paid little attention to the street for the first dayor two which he passed in the cell. Mostly he sat on the low pallet bed with his head sunk deeply in his hands. He gave himself up completely to melancholy thoughts. During the first day he had expected every hour to be brought before a military tribunal. But the fact that the day passed without incident more discomposing than the visits of the turnkey with his scanty meals informed Wat that he was not to be tried by any summary method of jurisdiction, though in the angry state of the feelings of the army against the townsfolk of Amersfort, and especially smouldering hatred of the provost-marshal's men, this would doubtless have been Wat's best chance.
But his mortal enemy did not wish to run the risk of seeing his rival set free with but some slight penalty, and, being in a position of great influence, he had his will. Day by day passed in the prison, each wearier and grayer than the other. Finally, Wat took to his barred windows and watched the stream of traffic. As the poignancy of his regret dulled to a steady ache, he became deeply interested in the boys who sported in the gutters and sailed ships of wood and paper in every spate and thunder-shower. He watched for the rosy-cheeked maids, with their black, clattering sabots, who paused a moment to adjust their foot-gear with a swish of pleated skirts and a glimpse of dainty ankle; and then, having once stopped, stood a long time gossiping with their plain-visaged, flat-capped, broad-breeched lovers. Above all, Wat loved the vagrant dogs that wandered lazily about the shady corners and fought one another like yellow, whirling hoops in the dust.
Often he would leave his meagre meal untouched in order to watch them. One dog in particular interested him more than all the human beings in the Street of the Prison. He was a long, thin-bodied beast of a yellowish-gray color, of no particular ancestry, and certainly withoutpersonal charms of any kind, save as it might be those incident to phenomenal and unredeemed ugliness.
To this ignoble hound Wat daily devoted a large proportion of his dole of bread. It amused him to entice the beast each day nearer to the railings, and then, while other stouter and better-favored animals were for the moment at a distance, Wat would deftly propel a pellet of bread to this faithful attendant. At first, the pariah of the Street of the Prison suspected a trap. For during an eventful life he had on several occasions been taken in with pepper balls and second-hand mustard plasters by the brisk young men of the hospitals and of the Netherlands trading companies.
Now it chanced that while Wat thus played good Samaritan to a cur of the gutter, two women stood at the outer gate of the prison. It was not the first occasion they had been there, nor yet the first time they had been denied entrance.
Maisie and Kate, with women's generosity and swift repentance, still blaming themselves deeply for their hastiness, had gone to inquire for Lochinvar early on the morning after he had been put in prison.
But neither by persuasions nor yet with all their little store of money could they buy even a moment's interview. The jailer's orders were too imperative. Some one high in authority had given the sternest injunctions that no one was to be allowed to see the prisoner on any pretext. Will had accompanied them on one occasion in his new officer's uniform, and even discovered in the chief turnkey an old comrade of Groningen. But it was vain. Strict obedience to his instructions was the keeper's life, as well as his bread and his honor. Simply, he dared not, he said, permit any to see that particular prisoner.
But, had they known it, there was a way of access to Wat. As they came out of the prison gates they met Barra. The provost-marshal, with a gloomy countenance,informed them that the prince took a very serious view of the affair of their cousin. However, he was in hopes that the sentence, though severe and exemplary, would not in any case be death. Probably, however, it might involve a very long period of imprisonment.
"The prince and his council have resolved that an example must be made. There have been, they say, far too many of these brawls in the army. It is such occurrences which breed ill-blood betwixt the soldiers and the townsfolk."
"But in that case," said Maisie, "why not persuade the prince to make an example of somebody else—not, surely, of our cousin Wat?"
Barra shrugged his shoulders.
"I am afraid," he said, softly, "that we cannot always arrange matters so that the penalties shall fall on shoulders whose sufferings will not hurt us. But you, dear ladies, can wholly trust me to use all my influence, so that your friend may soon find himself again at liberty."
Thus talking, they had turned to the right, and were now walking down the Street of the Prison. Maisie went a little ahead with her hand on her husband's arm, thinking that perhaps if Kate were left to herself she might be able to move the provost-marshal to kindlier purposes. Barra lingered as much as he could, in order to separate Kate and himself as widely as possible from the pair in front.
They passed close to Wat's window, and the prisoner watched them go by with black despair in his heart.
As they reached the gloomy angle of the prison, Barra indicated, with a wave of his hand, a remarkable gargoyle in the shape of a devil's head, frowning from the battlements of the gray, beetling tower. Through the closed bars of his window Wat noticed the gesture, as Barra intended that he should.
"My God!" he cried aloud, to the deaf walls, "he hasbrought her this way to gloat with her over my prison-house!"
And he flew at the bars of his window, striking and shaking them till his hands were bruised and bleeding.
"Let me get out! God in heaven! Let me get out—that I may kill him!" he cried, in the madness of agony.
But the bars resisted his utmost endeavor. Not so much as a particle of mortar stirred, and after spending all his strength in vain, Wat fell back on his hard pallet utterly exhausted, and lay there for hours in a vague and dazed unconsciousness.
The sullen, tranced hours verged towards evening, and Wat still lay motionless.
The keeper had twice been to his cell with food. But finding on the occasion of his second visit the previous supply of bread and water untouched, he had merely laid down the small loaf of black bread which was served out to the prisoners every night, and so departed.
At intervals a low voice seemed to steal into Wat's cell through the silence of the prison.
"A friend would speak with you—a friend would speak with you."
The words came up from the street beneath. At the third or fourth repetition Wat rose wearily and, with a dull and hopeless heart, went to the window whence he was wont to feed the dog with pellets of bread in the morning. A girl, small and slim of body, plainly attired in a black dress, stood directly underneath. Wat was about to turn back again to his couch, thinking that the summons could not have been intended for him, when the maid eagerly beckoned him to remain.
"Do you not remember me?" she said; "I am the Little Marie. I have never gone back to the Hostel of the Coronation. I have been very wicked. I know I have brought you here. I know that you cannot forgive me; but tell me something—anything that I may do for you?"
"It is not at all your fault that I am here," replied Wat Gordon, "only that of my own mad folly. Do not reproach yourself, nor trouble yourself, I pray you. There is nothing at all that you can do for me—"
"No one you love to whom I could carry a message—a letter?" The girl looked wistfully up at him as she said this. "I would deliver it so safely, so secretly."
A little before, Wat would gladly, eagerly indeed, have accepted the offer, and sent her at once to the street of Zaandpoort, in spite of his dismissal. But now his eyes had seen.
"Nay, Little Marie," he said, smiling sadly. "There is no one whom I love, no one who cares in the least to hear of me or of my welfare."
The girl stood still, plucking at the lace on her black sleeve, and looking down.
"Run home now, Little Marie," said Wat, kindly. "I am glad you have left the Hostel of the Coronation. Do not go back there any more."
The girl stood still in her place beneath the window.
At last she said, without looking up, "There is one whom you do not love, who cares much that you are in prison and alone!"
"And who may that be, Marie—old Jack Scarlett, mayhap?"
The girl looked up for a moment—a sudden, flashing look through blinding tears.
"Only bad-hearted Little Marie—that would die for you!" she said, brokenly.
And without caring even to wipe away her tears, she walked slowly down the midst of the Street of the Prison, seeing no one at all, and answering none of the greetings that were showered upon her.