Lochinvar: A Novel

Jan looked still more apologetically at Scarlett.

"I am black ashamed," he said; "but, after all, she means no harm by it. She has never had any one to teach her religion or good manners, but has run wild here on Branksea among the goats and the ignorant sailormen."

"I hear thee, Wise Jan," cried the voice again; "tell no lying tales on your betters, or I in my turn will tell the tale of how Wise Jan went to Portsmouth – how the watch bade him go in and bathe, because that the lukewarm town's-water was good for warts. And when he had gone in, glad at heart to hear the marvel, being exceedingly warty, the watch stole his clothes, and then put him a week in Bridewell for walking of the streets without them in sight of the admiral's mother-in-law!"

"'Tis a lie!" shouted Jan, looking up from the boat, out of which he had carefully extracted all the various belongings he had brought with him; "a great and manifest lie it is! It was, as all men know, for fighting with six sailormen of the fleet that I was shut up in Bridewell."

"Wise Jan, Wise Jan, think upon what parson says concerning the day of judgment!" replied the voice, reproachfully. "For if thus you deny your true doings and confess them not, you will set all the little devils down below to the carrying of firewood to be ready against the day of your hanging."

Wise Jan did not deign to reply. He resigned the unequal wordy fray, and taking a back-load of stuff on his shoulders, he led the way up the neatly gravelled path, which wound from the little wooden landing-stage into the green and arching woods.

As Scarlett and Wat followed after and looked about them with much interest, a tall maid, clad in a blue skirt and figured blouse, and with her short tangles of hair blowing loose about her ears, dropped suddenly and lightly as a brown squirrel upon the path before them. Whereat Wat and Scarlett stopped as sharply as if a gun had been loosed off at them; for the girl had handed herself unceremoniously down from among the leaves, and there she stood right in their path, as little disconcerted as if that were the customary method of receiving strangers upon the Isle of Branksea.

"I bid you welcome, gentlemen," she said, bowing to them like a courteous boy of the court. Indeed, her kirtle was not much longer than many a boy's Sunday coat, and her hair, cropped short and very curly, had a boy's cap set carelessly upon the back of it.

Scarlett stared vaguely at the pleasant apparition.

"The Lord have mercy!" he said, as if to himself; "is this another of them? 'Tis indeed high time we found that runaway love."

But Wat Gordon, to whom courtesy to women came by nature, placed himself before the old soldier. He had his cap in his hand and bowed right gracefully. Scarlett might cozen Wise Jan an he liked; but he, Wat Gordon, at least knew better how to speak to a woman than did any ancient Mustache of the Wars.

"My Lady of the Isle," he said, in the manner of the time, "I thank you for your most courteous and unexpected welcome. We are two exiles from Holland, escaping from prison. This good gentleman of yours has helped us to set our feet again upon the shores of Britain, and in return we have aided him to restore his master's property."

The girl listened with her head at the side, like a bird making up its mind whether or not to fly. When Wat was half-way through with his address she yawned.

"That is a long sermon and very dull," she said; "one might almost as well have been in church. Come to breakfast."

So, much crestfallen, Wat followed meekly in the wake of Scarlett, whose shoulders were shaking at the downfall of the squire of dames. At the corner of the path, just where it opened out upon a made road of beaten earth, Jack Scarlett turned with the obvious intention of venturing a facetious remark, but Wat met him in the face with a snarl so fierce that for peace' sake he thought better of it and relapsed into covertly smiling silence.

"If you crack so much as one of your rusty japes upon me, Jack Scarlett, I declare I'll set the point of my knife in your fat back!" he said, viciously.

And for the rest of the way Scarlett laughed inwardly, while Wat followed, plodding along sullenly and in an exceedingly evil temper.

The house to which they went was a curious one for the time and country. It was built wholly of wood, with eaves that came down five or six feet over the walls, so that they formed a continuous shelter all about the house, very pleasant in hot weather. A wooden floor, scrubbed very white and with mats of foreign grasses and straw upon it, went all around under these wide eaves. Twisted shells, shining stones, and many other remarkable and outlandish curiosities were set in corners or displayed in niches.

At the outer door the girl turned sharply upon them.

"My name is Mehitabel Smith," she said, "and this is my father's house. I like your looks well enough, but I would also know your degree and your business. For Branksea is for the nonce in my keeping, and that you have come with Wise Jan Pettigrew is no recommendation – since, indeed, the creature takes up with every wastrel and run-the-country he can pick up."

Wat had not got over the rebuff of his first introduction, and sulkily declined to speak; but Scarlett hastened to assure Mistress Mehitabel of the great consideration Wat and he enjoyed both at home and abroad.

"And for what were you in prison in Holland?" she said. "Was he in prison?" she continued, without waiting for any answer, looking at Wat.

Scarlett nodded. He had it on the tip of his tongue to say that it had been owing to a brawl in a tavern. But at the last moment, seeing Wat's dejected countenance, he made a little significant gesture of drawing his hand across his throat.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV

TRUE LOVE AND PIGNUTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mehitabel started up and began turning the bacon quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wat made a little movement of impatience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That you will know one day," said Wat, sagely nodding his head, "and it may not be long, for your eyes are looking for love, and in love what one looks for that one finds. Hearken, I have stood one against fifty for the sake of my love. Willingly and gladly I have left land, rank, friends, future; I have made them all no more than broken toys that I might win my love. I count my life itself but a little thing, scarce worth the offering, all for her sake!"

"And is it because you hope to be so happy with her that you do all these things?" asked Mehitabel, now perfectly sober and serious, and clearly anxious to comprehend the matter.

"Nay," answered Wat, in a low voice, "to be happy may indeed come to us – pray God it may, and speedily. But to prove one's love as a man proves the edge of his sword, to do somewhat great for the beloved, to be something worthier, higher, better, to make your love glad and proud that she loves you, and that she possesses your love – these are greater aims than merely selfishly to be happy."

Mehitabel sighed as she rose.

"I suppose it must be so," she said, "but it is a great and weary mystery. Moreover, I have yet to see the man I would choose before a plate of early strawberries. And, anyway, pignuts, dug out of the ground and eaten on the tree-tops, are right excellent good!"

CHAPTER XXVI

A BOAT IN SIGHT AT SULISCANNA

There was one spot on Suliscanna, the island to which she had been brought, that Kate especially loved. It was where the great Lianacraig precipice, a thousand feet of hard rock, curiously streaked with the green of serpentine and the white of the breeding and roosting ocean birds, sank sheer into the foam-fringed emerald wash of the sea.

At the eastward end of the vast wall there began a beach of pure white sand, curving round in a clean sickle-sweep for a mile and a half to the mural face of the cliffs of Aoinaig, which served for its northern gateway.

To this wide strand, with its frowning guardian watch-towers of tall cliff on either side, Kate came every day, week in and week out, during the first months of her isolation. She took her way thither from the low, thatched hut of Mistress Alister McAlister, in which she dwelt in a cleanliness and comfort more reminiscent of Carrick than characteristic of the neighboring houses of Suliscanna. The cattle did not occupy the first apartment in the house of Mistress McAlister. The floor did not, as was commonly the case, rise gradually towards the roof upon a rich deposit of "peat-coom" and general débris, solidified by the spent water of the household and the trampling of many feet.

The house in which Kate dwelt on Suliscanna was paved with flags of slate, which Alister and his wife had put in position, to the great scandal of the entire island – including the minister of the Small Isles himself, who preached most powerfully against the practice as pampering to poor human vanity, and causing foolish people to grasp at worldly state and pomp, and so neglect the glories of another and a better world.

But Mistress McAlister had her answer ready to that.

"I am of opinion," she retorted, when the sermon was reported to her, "that Alister and me will no be left strange and friendless up yonder on the streets of gold, just because we happen to prefer clean stanes to dirty peat and fish-banes here below."

And for this pointed rejoinder Mistress McAlister was debarred the table of communion.

"I'm no carin'," she said. "There's guid and godly ministers in my ain country that has suffered mickle for godliness. What matters it if I do suffer a wee here for cleanliness? The one is sib to the other, they say. And wha kens but after all it may help one's eternal interest to bide away from sic a kirk as they have here? – no' a wiselike word nor a solemn reproof from the beginning to the end of the exercises!"

This bright morning Kate stood alone on the white fringe of sand. She shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked at the far blue hills of the main-land, and often she sighed heavily.

For weeks she had watched for a boat to come. She had cast every bottle she could obtain on the island into the race of the tide which passed Lianacraig, each with a message enclosed telling of her place of seclusion. Now she could only pace the shore and wait.

"He will come," she said to herself, with a limitless faith. "I am sure he loves me, and that he will find me. Prison bars could not contain him, nor dangers daunt him. I know he will follow and find me. God make it soon – before the other comes."

Her mind went back to the cold, sinister eyes of my Lord of Barra, and she shuddered even in the hot sunshine.

"Then would the danger begin," she said; "for though all these folks are kind to me, yet not even the minister nor Betsy Landsborough would stir a hand to save me from the chief. Such a marriage is customary. It is the way of the clan. The Lords of Barra have ever chosen their brides in this fashion, they say. I am here alone on an island without boats. The chief has ordered it so. None are allowed to approach or land on Suliscanna till the master comes to claim the captive and the slave."

The girl's wonderful dark eyes had mysterious depths in them as she went over in her heart the perils and difficulties of her unknown future.

"But never, while I live, will I be untrue to him whom I love. If I cannot be his, at least I shall never be another's. And if they try to force me to that which I loathe – thank God there is always a way out! Gladly would I die rather than that any other should take the place that is his alone – my king, my husband!"

She spoke the last words very softly, but her eyes looked wistfully out towards the far hills beyond the sea, over which she waited for him to come. Then she blushed red from neck to brow at the sound of her own whisper. She even turned her about swiftly to see that none had heard, and that no bird of the air could carry the matter.

But only the sea-swallows circled widely above, along the black wet skerries the gulls wailed, and the silly moping guillemots sat in rows upon the rocks of Lianacraig. All were intent upon their own concerns that bright morning, and up among the tiny green crofts she saw Mistress McAlister, a lowland sunbonnet on her head, flashing in and out of her door in that lively and sprightly fashion which distinguished her movements from the solid sloth characteristic of even the busiest moments of the other good-wives of Suliscanna.

Kate paced the shore, and thought within herself the still assured thoughts of one whose mind is made up about the main issue, and who can afford quietly to consider concerning matters less important.

The sea was very still this day about Suliscanna. The white surf-rim round the great cliffs was hardly to be noted. The gap-toothed caves which pierce them were still. The roaring and hissing of the "bullers" were not heard. Only in front of the island to landward the tides swayed and ran like a mill-race, where the ledges rose black and dripping from the deep, and the currents from the ocean swirled onward, or sucked back through the narrows in dangerous whirlpools and strange leaping hillocks of sea-water.

Kate stood wondering at their beauty, without the least idea that these oily swirls and boiling hummocks of smooth green water were among the most dangerous sea perils to be met with all the way from Pentland to Solway.

Suddenly her eyes lit on a dark speck far away out upon the bright plain. It might have been the head of a swimming seal, or the black razor-edge of a large skerry showing over the rush of the tide. But, as she watched, the dot grew blacker and larger. A boat was certainly approaching the island. Kate stood trembling. For the issue meant life and death to her. It might be her tyrant come to claim his captive. It might be her saviour come to save.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE TIDE-RACE OF SULISCANNA

Kate McGhie stood looking across the boiling, hillocky water of the Suck of Suliscanna in the direction of the boat, which moment by moment blackened and grew larger, rising steadily towards her out of the east. The day was so still, the tide so smooth as it swept inshore after passing the oily "bullers" of the roost, that she had no idea of the world of danger those in the adventurous bark had to pass before her prow could grate on the white sand of the landing-beach between the opposing headlands of Aionaig and Lianacraig.