Lochinvar: A Novel

"Fairly and soothly, my man," said the woman, in his ear. "There is no need to rair it as if ye were at a field-preachin' on the wilds of Friarminion. Quietly, quietly; tell me, in brief, what ye wad do for your friend and what for your lass?"

"For my friend I will tell you," said Wat – "though I know not what gives you the right to ask – for my friend I would do all that a man may – face my friend's foes, help his well-wishers till I had not a rag to share, stand shoulder to shoulder with him, and never ask the cause of his quarrel; share the crust and divide the stoup, die and be buried in one hole with him at the last."

"Aye," said Bess, "that is spoken like a soldier, and well spoken, too. Ye mean it, lad, and ye wad do it, too. But for your lass – "

"For her," said Wat, lowering his voice, solemnly, "for the lass I love, is it? I will rather tell you what I have done already. For her I have gone mad. I have flung my chances by handfuls into the sea. At sight of a single scornful glint of her eye I ran headlong to destruction; at a harsh word from her I had almost thrown away life and honor both. For a kindly word I have set my head in the dust under her foot. I have cherished in my deepest heart no pride, no will, no ambition that I would not have made a stepping-stone of, that her foot might tread upon it."

Wat paused for breath amid the rush of his words ere he went on:

"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,Loved I not honor more,'

somewhat thus runs the catch. But the man that made that kenned nothing of love. For I would make all the honor of men no more than a straw-wisp to feed the flames to warm the feet of my love withal. To 'die for her' is a pretty saying, and forever in the mouth of every prating fool whenever he comes anigh a woman; but I would smile under the torture of the boot and abide silently the Extreme Question only to preserve her heart from a single pang."

"Would you give her up to another if you knew that it was for her good?"

"A thousand times no!" Wat was beginning, furiously, when his companion put her hand over his mouth.

"If ye dinna hunker doon beside me, and learn to be still, ye will e'en see her ye think so muckle o' the bride o' my Lord o' Barra, and that, too, on the morn of a day when ye will be learning to dance a new quick-step oot o' the tower window up on the heuch there."

"I know," said Wat, speaking more low, and answering as if to himself her former question, "that it is within the power of the love of woman, when it is purest and noblest, to be able to give up that which they love to another, if they judge that it is for the beloved's good. But they that think such surrender to be the essence of the highest love of men ken nothing at all about the matter. For me, I would a thousand times rather clasp my love in my arms and leap with her over the crags of Lianacraig, than see her given to any other. And I would sooner set the knife into her sweet throat with mine own hand than that Barra should so much as lay a finger upon her."

"And your friend?" said Bess Landsborough. She was smiling in the dark as if she were well pleased.

"Jack Scarlett I love," replied Wat, "but not for him did I break prison, overpass the hollow seas, and lay my life like a very little thing in the palm of a maiden's hand."

"It is well," said Bess Landsborough, with a sigh. "That is the true lilt of the only love that is worth the having. The heart beats just so when there comes into it the love that contents a woman – the love that is given to but few to find in this weariful, unfriendly, self-seeking warld."

She rose to her feet and looked eastward.

"In an hour and a half at the outside ye maun be on your road, lad, back to your hidie-hole. I ask ye not where that may be. But gin Alister McAlister sleeps soundly ye shall speak with your friend – while I, Bess Landsborough, a decent married woman frae the pairish o' Colmonel, keep watch and ward at the chaumer door ower the pair o' ye."

She took him again by the hand, laid her finger a moment soberly on his lip, and then led him about the house to a low door, through which she entered and drew Wat Gordon after her, bowing his head almost to the level of his waist in the act of following his guide.

Wat was rejoiced to know that he was about to see Jack Scarlett, both because he had thought him dead in the tide-race, and also that together they might devise some plan of escape for themselves and for the delivery of Kate from her durance. At an inner door his guide halted and listened long and earnestly. The chamber in which they stood was dark save for the red ashes of a turf fire in the centre. Bess Landsborough tapped lightly on the inner door and opened it quietly. Then she took Wat by the shoulder and pushed him in.

"Ye said your 'Carritches'2 to me, and ye said them weel, or, my faith, 'tis not here ye should have found yoursel' this nicht! Gang in there, lad, and say the 'Proofs' and the 'Reasons Annexed.'"

Wat, greatly puzzled, stepped within. He found himself in a small room, dark save when the dying fire of peat in the outer chamber threw red glimmers into it.

"Jack – Jack Scarlett!" whispered Wat, astonished that the old soldier did not greet him.

"He must be very sound asleep!" he thought.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SURRENDER OF THE BELOVED

But something in the air of the chamber struck to the heart – something different, subtle, unfamiliar, dazing. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw the figure of a girl lying on a couch of heather over which was thrown a rug made of the skins of wild animals. The face was turned from him, but the girl was not asleep, for he could see that quick, helpless sobs shook her frame, and that her attitude betokened the abandonment of despair. Wat Gordon's heart leaped within him and then stood still, when he realized that for the first time in his life he stood within the chamber of his love.

At the noise of the opening door the girl slowly turned her head, and her eyes fell on the figure of Wat. The young man sank on his knees a little way from the couch. The girl continued to gaze at him without speech, and as for Wat, he could find no fitting words. He strove for utterance, but his tongue was dry to the roots, and the roof of his mouth parched like leather.

Presently Kate sat up with a world of wonder and fear on her face. She was wrapped about the shoulders in a great shawl of fleecy wool, such as a hundred years ago the shipwrecked mariners of the Spanish Armada had taught these northern islanders to knit. Beneath it, here and there, appeared the white glimmer of fine linen cloth, such as could only come from the lint wheels of the Lowlands.

The girl's lips were parted, and her eyes, great and black, appeared so brilliant that the shining of them seemed to lighten all her face there in that dim place.

"Wat," she said, "you have come back to me! I knew you would, and I am not afraid. I knew you would come if you could and speak once to me. For you are mine in all worlds, and you gave your life for me. It is but a dream, I know – but ah, such a sweet dream!"

She held out her arms towards him with such wonderful pity that Wat, kneeling on the floor, could not move; and words he found none to utter, so marvellous did her speech seem to him.

"It is a dream," she repeated, in a voice full of hushed awe, "I know it. And it is a very gracious God that hath sent it to me this first night of my loss. I saw my lad go down in the deep, hurrying waters – my love, my love, and now he will never know that I loved him!"

"Kate," whispered Wat, hoarsely, and with a voice which he knew not for his own – "Kate, it is indeed I – myself, in the flesh. I have come to save you. I did not die. I did not drown. It is I, Wat Gordon, your own lad, come to kiss your hand, to carry you safe through a world of enemies."

The girl leaned forward and looked towards him wistfully and intently. She was shaken from head to foot with strange tremors. Love, fear, and most delicious shame strove together within her maiden's heart.

"If indeed you be Walter Gordon in the flesh, I thank the Lord for your safety. But go, for here you are in terrible danger every moment. I have said, I know not what. I was asleep, and when I awoke I saw you, and thought that I yet dreamed a dream."

Wat reached over and took her hand. He bent his head to it reverently and kissed it.

"Sweet love," he whispered, "have no fear. In a little while I shall be away. I must go from you ere the dawn comes. But your friend and mine, your hostess of the isle, brought me to this dear and sacred place, thinking me not unworthy. She waits at the door. In a little space the light will come and the island men awake. Then I must take my life in my hand and be far away before the day. But rest assured, I am at all times near enough to watch over you, my beloved."

Wat looked steadfastly and adoringly at Kate, and lo! the tears were running silently down her face and falling on the pillow. He drew a little nearer to her.

"Love," he said, softly, "you have forgiven me. You forgave me long ago, did you not? I loved you over much. That was the reason. See," he whispered, pulling his gold heart from about his neck, "this is the token that you forgave me." And he bent and kissed it before putting it back again in his bosom.

She raised her eyes to his. They shone upon him with a strange light that had never been kindled in them before. The light of a great love shone out of the wonderful deeps of them, beaconing the way clear into the haven of her heart. It was the maiden's look of gladness he saw there – the joy that she had kept herself for the beloved – so that now at last she can give him all.

"Oh, Wat – dear, dear Wat," she whispered, "I love you; I cannot choose but love you. I cannot be proud with you any more. I am so tired of being proud. For my heart has cried out for you to come to me this weary, weary while. I have been so long alone – without any one – without you."

And she made a little virginal gesture of pain which sent Wat's arms about her in a moment. He could not answer her in words.

But he was wiser, for instead their lips drew together. He kept his eyes on hers as their faces closed each on the other. His head reeled with the imagined sweetness. He seemed to remember nothing but her eyes, and how they were ocean-deep and world-large. He felt that he could plunge into them as into the sea from an overhanging cliff.

But just ere their lips met Kate suddenly dropped her head against his breast.

"Wat!" she whispered, intensely, "tell me – you heard what I said when I thought you had come to me in a dream – that – that I loved you and wanted you to return to me? You will never think less of me, never love me less for my words, nor for letting you love me thus?"

Wat Gordon laughed a low, secure, satisfied laugh deep down in his throat. He had forgotten the watchful woman at the door, the waking enemies without, the coming dawn swiftly striding towards Suliscanna from the east, the long, dangerous passage of the sea-cavern, the perils innumerable that lay about them both. He loved, and he held his love all securely in his arms. She questioned of his love, and he felt that he could answer her.

"My love," he whispered, "I love you so that all things – life, death, eternity – are the same to me. Nothing weighs in the scale when set to balance you. I loved you, Kate, when I thought you must hate me for my folly and wickedness. How shall I love you now, when your sweetest words of this night are writ in fire on my heart? But all is one – I love you, and I love you, and I love you!"

The girl sighed the satisfied sigh of one who listens to that which she desires to hear and knows that she will hear, yet who for very love's sake must needs hear it again and yet again.

And her arms also went tremblingly about him, and they twain that had been sundered so long, kissed their first kiss – the kiss of surrender that comes but once, and then only to the pure and worthy. The dewy warmth and fragrance of her lips, the heady rapture of the unexpected meeting so thrilled his heart and dominated his senses that broad day might well have stolen upon them and found the lovers so, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot."

But the voice of Bess Landsborough from the doorway caused them to start suddenly apart with a shock of loss like the snapping of a limb. Yet it was a kindly voice, and one full of infinite sympathy for those who, like Wat and Kate, were ready to count all things well lost for love.

"My lad," she said, gently, "ye maun e'en be tramping. In an hour or so the sun will be keekin' ower the hills of the east, and gin ye tarry your lass will mourn a lover. There are more days than one, and nights longer than this short one of summer. Trust your love to me. Bess Landsborough chose a strange way of love hersel', but she keeps a kindly heart for young folk, and you twa silly bairnies shall not lippen to her in vain. Come your ways, lad."

And Wat would have gone at her word. For the hope of the future had possession of him, and, besides, his head was dazed and moidered with the first taste of love's sweetness.

But the girl raised herself a little and held out her arms.

"Bid me good-night just this once," she said, "and tell me again that you love me."

So Wat took his sweetheart in his arms. There seemed no words that he could say which would express the thoughts of his heart at that moment.

"I love you – God knows how I love you!" was all that he found to say. And then, "God keep my little lass!"

There came a strange hush in his ears, and the next moment he found himself outside, breasting the cool airs of the night as if they had been the waves of the tide-race, and listening to the voice of Bess Landsborough, which carried no more meaning to his ears than if it had been the crying of a seagull rookery upon the rocks of Lianacraig.

"Come back to-night and I will meet you at the shore-side," was all that disentangled itself from the meaningless turmoil of his guide's words. For the fragrance of his love's lips was yet on his, and he was wondering how long the memory of it would stay with him.

Without even waiting to take off his clothes, Wat pushed out into the channel of the sea-passage. He swam as easily and unconsciously as though he had been floating in some world of dreams, in which he found himself finned like a fish. And when he came to himself he was lying under the shelter of his boat in the cove of his own green islet of Fiara, trying to recall the look that he had seen in his love's eyes in the gloom of Bess Landsborough's guest-chamber. But though he buried his head in his hands, and laid his hands on the sand to shut out the sky and the shining breakers, he could not recall the similitude of it. Only he knew that it had been most wonderful, and that his eyes had never seen anything like it before.

CHAPTER XXXIII

AN ANCIENT LOVE AFFAIR

When Wat awoke on the island and stirred his cramped limbs, on which the sun had already dried his wet clothes, in the warm and briskly stirring airs of the summer morning, he could hardly believe in the reality of his experiences of the night. One by one he remembered the passage of the cave, the Highland sentinel sleeping by his dying fire, his new and kindly protector, Bess Landsborough. Then last of all, and suddenly overflowing all his heart with mighty love (even as a volcano, Askja or Vatna, pours without warning its burning streams over icy provinces), the meeting with his love in the dusky undercloud of night rushed upon his memory and filled all his soul with a swift and desperate joy.

What wonder that the sweet, low voice he had heard call him "love" out of the darkness should in the broad common day scarce seem real to poor Wat Gordon of Lochinvar? He had passed through so many things to hear it. Also, ever since the death of Little Marie, he knew the accent of the voice that speaks not for the sake of "making love," but which unconsciously and inevitably reveals love in every syllable.

Wat had made love in his time, and ladies of beauty and repute not a few – my Lady Wellwood among the number – had made love to him. But he knew the difference now.

For love which must needs be "made" bears always the stamp of manufacture. True love, on the other hand, is a city set on a hill; it cannot be hid, and this is why the love-glance of a maiden's eye so eternally confutes the philosophers, and ofttimes lays the lives of the mighty, for making or marring, in the hollow of very little hands.

The day that succeeded this night adventure was a long one both for Wat and Kate. For the girl had been even less prepared for the astonishing event of the night than Wat himself. Providence, by the hand of Mistress Alister McAlister, had certainly worked strangely. Indeed, the only person wholly unmoved was that lady herself. She bustled about the flags of her kitchen, slapping them almost contemptuously with her broad bare feet, busy as a bee with her baking and brewing, like the tidy, thrifty, "eident"3 Ayrshire good-wife that she was. Not a glance at Kate revealed that she had been instrumental in opening a new chapter in two lives only the night before.

When, midway through the forenoon, Alister brought his bulky body to the door-step, his loving wife drove him off again to the gateway of the tower with an aphorism which is held of the highest repute in the parish of Colmonel:

"Na, na, come na here for your brose – e'en get your meal o' meat where ye work your wark!"

And the stoop-shouldered giant coolly retreated without a word of protest, merely helping himself as he went out to a double handful of oatmeal from his wife's bake-board, for all the world like a theftuous school-boy, who keeps the while one eye on the master. With this he took his way to the spring which trickled down by the castle wall. And there, very deliberately and philosophically, he proceeded to make himself a dish of cold "drammoch" on the smooth surface of a stone which the water had hollowed.

"And mony is the hungry mouth that would be glad of it," said he, by way of grace after meat. For Alister was of the excellent and approven opinion that a dinner of herbs by the dikeside is better than a banquet of Whitehall with the sauce of an angry woman's tongue for seasoning thereto.

But when Bess Landsborough brought the prisoner his farles of cake and cool buttermilk (for it was "kirning day"), she took out also a handful of crisp bannocks for her husband. These she thrust under his nose with the sufficient and comprehensive monosyllable, "Hae!" And Alister accepted the act as at once honorable amend and judicious apology.

Nor was Alister behindhand in courtesy. For though the silent jailer did not utter a single word either to his wife or his prisoner, he drew his skean dhu and cut a whang from the sweet-milk cheese which he kept by him. To this he added a horn of strong island spirit, which of a surety proved very much to the taste of the late master-at-arms to their several Highnesses Louis, King of France, and William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Netherlands.

Thereafter, with consideration particularly delicate, he withdrew out of earshot and sat on a knoll before the castle, leaving his wife to talk at leisure to her ancient sweetheart. For Alister McAlister was a man without jealousy. He knew that he could keep his wife, even as he kept his head in battle, with the little wee point of his knife and the broad, broad blade of his claymore. And as for ancient sweethearts, what cared he for a peck of them? Bess Landsborough might have had a score of lovers in the 'Lowlands low'; yet had she not chosen to leave them all and follow him up the braes – aye, and over the sea straits, threading the ultimate islands till at last she had come to this barren holding of rock, scantily felted down with heather and peat, on the isle of Suliscanna?

But, on the other hand, Scarlett was not the man to lose his time, in spite of bonds and imprisonments.

"Ye are as weel-faured as ever, Bess. Ye were aye a bonny blithesome lass a' the days o' ye!" said he, complacently, as he munched his farles of cake and took sup about of usquebaugh from the horn and buttermilk from the pail.

"Havers!" said Mistress McAlister, "ye are an auld eneuch man to ken that ye canna blaw twice in my lug wi' the same flairdies. Ye forget I hae heard ye at that job before. And it lasted – hoo lang? Just e'en till your company rade awa' frae Girvan to Kirkcudbright, and then ye took up with Maggie Nicholson, the byre-lass o' Bombie, the very second week that ever ye were there! And telled her, I dare say, that she was weel-faured, blithe, and a bonny woman!"

"I see ye haena forgotten how to belie them that ye tried to break the hearts o', Bess Landsborough," said Scarlett, without, however, letting his broken heart interfere with a very excellent appetite. "Ye weel ken that ye sent me frae the door o' the Laggan wi' my tail atween my legs like a weel-lickit messan, and twa o' your ill-set cronies lookin' on at my shaming, too."

"I'm thinkin', my man John," retorted Bess Landsborough, "that ye had better say as little as ye can aboot that ploy. For the lasses were Mirren Semple o' the Auld Wa's and Meg Kennedy o' Kirriemore, that had come in the afternoon to keep me company. And as we sat talking ower ae thing after anither, we spak' amang ithers o' you, my braw trooper – Sergeant John Scarlett, no less, that rode so gallantly with the colors in his hand. And by this and that we had it made clear that ye had been for making up to a' the three o' us at once! An' so we compared your tricks. How ye had gotten doon on your knees and telled us that ye loved us best o' a' the world. Ye had kissed oor hands – at least, mine and Meg Kennedy's. But your favorite fashion was to take the skirts o' oor gouns and kiss the hem o' them, swearin' that ye wad raither kiss the border o' oor cloaks than the mouth o' the grandest woman in Scotland. (A' the three o' us!) Then ye asked for a curl cut off aboon our brows – at least, frae mine and Mirren Semple's. For Meg Kennedy never had sic a thing in her life, but had aye flat, greasy hair, sleekit like a mowdiewart4 hingin' by the neck in a trap on a wat day. And her ye telled that ye couldna bide hair that wadna keep smooth, but was aye a'kinked and thrawn into devalls and curliewigs. Oh, sic a bonny, true-speakin', decent, mensefu' callant as the three o' us made ye oot to be! So when we had ye gye-and-weel through-hands, wha should ride up to the door but my gay lad himsel', this same braw cavalier. So Mirren and Meg and me, we gaed oot ontil the step and telled ye what we thocht o' ye. Ow aye, ye were a puir disjaskit cuif that day, Sergeant John Scarlett, for a' your silver spurs and your red sodjer's coat!"

John Scarlett laughed loud and long at the record of his iniquities, but his abasement, if at the time as profound as Bess Landsborough made it out to be, had certainly completely passed away. For he cried out: "What a grand memory ye hae for the auld times, Bess! I warrant ye, ye couldna gang ower the points o' Effectual Calling as briskly, nor yet the kings o' Judah and Israel that ye learned on the Sabbath forenichts by the lowe o' the Colmonel peats!"

"But eneuch o' havers," said Bess; "ken ye that yon braw lad o' yours is safe and hearty? Mair than that, he met wi' his bonny lass yestreen. Baith o' them kens what love is – a thing that ye never kenned, no, nor will ken to your dying day, John Scarlett."

"Aweel, aweel," replied Scarlett, placably, "at ony rate I am desperate glad that Wat's won oot o' the brash o' the mony waters safe and sound; and as for love, if I kenned nocht aboot it, at least I hae had experience o' some gye fair imitations in my time, that did well eneuch for a puir perishing mortal like me."

* * * * *

On the other hand, Wat on his isle of Fiara had been exceedingly busy all that day. He had chosen a shallow cavern on the most remote northern shore of Fiara, dry and open like the entrance-hall of a house, and into it he had carried a large quantity of fresh and blooming heather, sufficient for the most luxurious couch in the world. This he arranged in a little sheltered alcove to the right of the main chamber, and pleased himself with the simple arrangements, talking to himself all the time.

"By this path she can go down to the sea without being observed. Into this basin I can lead the water that trickles over the rock, so that she may wash on chill or rainy mornings."