Lochinvar: A Novel

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

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

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

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

The heads on the water grew smaller and blacker as they passed him, and the men swam on towards the outer entrance of the cave. Presently they came underneath the great span of the arch. Wat could see Barra drag himself out of the water and clamber on a rocky point which jutted out into the Sound. The three followers lifted themselves after him, and sank on the rocks in attitudes of fatigue. But Barra stood erect, his slim figure so black against the dim moonlight without that he might have been wearing his court suit of sable velvet, although actually he was naked to the waist.

So there on the pinnacle he stood, gazing silently on the sleeping isle of Fiara, even as Satan might have gazed (so Wat Gordon thought) on the garden – close to that first delicious Paradise in which all unconscious Adam wandered with his Eve.

Long he stood thus, fixed in contemplation, revolving evilest thoughts and intents, his three attendant fiends crouched behind him in a shapeless mass upon the dark rocks, none of them daring to interrupt his musings.

Then quite abruptly Barra descended and plunged once more into the water. Lochinvar in his turn stood erect and made ready to follow him, for he feared that his enemies were about to cross the Sound and attack on the instant the little company waiting his own return under the cliffs of the northern shore.

But he heard Barra say, "It is enough for to-night. Let us return to the harbor. The cailleach spoke the truth."

Then without further speech between them, the four men swam past him and disappeared, faint wreathings and smears of phosphorescence trailing after them out of the gloom into which they had vanished.

Wat drew a long breath as they were lost to sight. He knew that he had been assisting at one of the last scenes in Barra's complete and minute exploration of the isle – every cave and passage, every entrance to and outgate from it. It was just such an undertaking as he might have expected from a man so resolute as Barra, with a retinue as desperate as Haxo the Bull, his Calf, and his Killer.

Now, indeed, he was aware that there was no time to be lost in getting away from this isle of Fiara, which had brought him so many happy hours. Adam knew that the spoiler had looked upon his demi-Paradise, and that Eve herself was in danger.

Wat waited a while before he dared to bring out the boat and row across the Sound to the place where Scarlett and Kate were waiting for him. He found Scarlett philosophically seated with his back against a rock, but Kate moved uneasily about upon the shore, clasping her hands in great anxiety.

"O Wat," she said, "my dear, my dear, I thought some ill chance had befallen you. Wellnigh had I come to seek you, but for your command to bide with Scarlett."

"And it is indeed well, Kate," he answered, smiling a little, "that you were thus mindful of my words."

Then Wat told them all that he had seen and heard, till even Scarlett was impressed by the imminence of their needs. So without delaying a moment the three took such burdens as they could carry, and set out to cross the ridge of Fiara to the place where Wise Jan Pettigrew waited beside their first boat with everything ready to push off. But before they left the boat which Wat had brought out of the water-cavern, Wat bade Scarlett help him to load her with stones from the beach.

With a mallet he knocked out the plug under the stern seat, and, as before, sunk her in mid-channel. Then he swam ashore, and followed Kate and Scarlett over to the northern side of the island.

The moon was just dipping below the horizon when, with Kate in the stern and Wise Jan handling the boat to a marvel, they left the beautiful island behind them.

Kate drew in a long breath, and her hand rested a moment on Wat's in the darkness. It was the isle of her first assurance and her dawning happiness. No place could ever be quite the same to her. There it lay, Fiara, the Isle of Bliss, looming gray against the dark, solemn, bird-haunted front of Lianacraig. Should she ever see it more? There was the dear rowan-tree at the angle of the wall where they had so often sat, and there was the sweet sickle-sweep of white sand by which they had so often walked. A little farther over the dusk and sleeping Sound was Suliscanna, on which stood Bess Landsborough's house, and that smoky inner room where her love had first taken her to his heart, coming to her like a vision out of the night.

But to all Kate's questionings there came back no answer save the hoarse threatening growl of the Suck of Suliscanna arching itself angrily to the right, the gentle flap of the small sheet above, and the talking clatter of the wavelets below the stem as they glided away out into the night.

Behind them the surf was roaring on the rocks which, like the black fins of sharks, jutted, toothed and threatening, from the tail-end of the Suck of Suliscanna. There came also a chill sough of wind from the west, and with it, rising as it were from the ocean depths, the dead sea-mist, which swelled and eddied about the boat of our four travellers. Presently the bright reflection of the stars on the crest of each coming wave, as Wat lay in the stern and watched, dimmed itself. The twinkling rays were shorn. Their diffused sparkling first dulled to a point, and then became extinguished altogether as the voyagers were enveloped in the gray uncanny smother.

It was their first touch of ill-luck. Since Wat and Scarlett had left Holland on their quest, save for their shipwreck all had gone well with them. But now, on the verge of success, they were caught by the sea-mist, and in that place of dangerous currents and deadly rocks they had to submit to be carried they knew not where, nor yet into what unseen dangers of the deep. Wise Jan set his hand high over the side, and the sea-fog ran visibly through his fingers like water in a mill-race. Evidently they were moving fast in some direction, and the current was carrying them swiftly and strongly onward without their being able to alter or amend their destination.

Wat went astern and sat beside Kate. Wise Jan had taken down the sail. It was useless to them till they could see in what direction they were being carried. Scarlett grumbled steadily and inarticulately amidships; but Wat and Kate sat with their hands locked in each other's, silent all through the night.

The morn came slowly. The salt, steamy vapor rolled and swirled about them, brightening and darkening with alternate threat and promise – both, however, equally illusive.

It was broad day when the lift of heaven suddenly cleared. The sun looked slantways in upon them, opening a way into the heart of the mist, like a rapier thrust by a master's wrist. The clouds dispersed before the clear shining, as though it needed but that single stab to prick the airy bladder of their pretension. The wreaths of vapor trailed themselves away, breaking into steamy garlands and flat patches with scalloped edges as they went. The blue sky stooped over on either side and hooked itself permanently on to the blue sea-floor.

And lo! there they were at the south end of Suliscanna, and there was the schooner Sea Unicorn just coming out from her anchorage under full sail within two hundred yards of them.

It was no use to row or to set the sail. Our three were so taken with deadly apprehension that they sat quite still as the vessel approached. The captain hailed them from his station by the helm, but neither Wat nor Scarlett had the heart to reply. A boat was lowered, and in a few moments Wat and Kate were being received on board the Sea Unicorn, of Poole, by Captain Smith, her owner and master.

And there before them, as they looked across the deck from the side up which they had come, were seated three people – a man of stately presence, gray-headed and erect, a lady of doubtful years and charms not wholly departed – and Barra.

The old man rose and came forward towards Kate with a strange expression of apology and appeal on his face.

"Kate, my lass!" said he.

"My father!" cried the girl, taking, however, no step towards him, but keeping her hold of Wat Gordon's hand.

But Wat was staring at the lady who sat beside Barra.

"My Lady Wellwood!" he said, in utter astonishment.

Barra smiled his thin, acrid, unmoved smile.

"You mistake, sir," he said; "not now my Lady Wellwood, but the fair bride of Roger McGhie and the very charming mistress of his mansion of Balmaghie."

CHAPTER XL

SERPENT'S EGGS

For a little we must leave both the narrow, sea-barriered, rock-girt bounds of Suliscanna and the flat, hard-won, and yet more hardly kept fields and polders of the Netherlands for the moorish pastures, the green, changeful woodlands, the flowery water-meadows of Balmaghie. It is necessary at this point to take a cast back in our story and tell of the strange things which have befallen Roger McGhie since we saw him at our tale's beginning, making his farewells by the stirrup-leather of my Lady Wellwood.

It was perhaps natural that the laird of Balmaghie, delicate of body, retiring of habit, a recluse from the society of roaring bears like Lag and Baldoon, who were his immediate neighbors, should succumb readily enough to the fascinations of my Lady Wellwood. It is not so obvious, on the other hand, why she found pleasure in the company of Roger McGhie.

It may be that the caustic kindliness, the flavor of antique chivalry, which had compelled to more than liking the unwonted heart of John Graham of Claverhouse, also had power to fascinate the widow of the Duke of Wellwood. That title had been one of the late king's making, and in the absence of heirs direct, it had lapsed immediately on the death of the king's minister and administrator in Scotland, while the original impoverished earldom of Wellwood had gone back to a kinsman remotely collateral. So my lady never forgot that she was not "the dowager" merely, but still, in the face of all – Susannah, first and only Duchess of Wellwood.

Nevertheless, to her credit, perhaps, as a woman of discernment, she married Roger McGhie, and that though far younger, richer, and gallanter men stood ready at her call. But the needy king and his new ministry had stripped her estates of most that her husband had so painfully gathered. Little was left her but the barren heritages of Grenoch – where, indeed, was heather enough and granite to spare, but where crops were few and scanty, and where even meadow-hay had a fashion of vanishing in the night whenever the Dee water took it into its head to sweep through the narrow Lane, raising the loch till it overflowed the low-lying meads nearly to the house-door of Grenoch itself.

Then, on the other hand, the acres of Balmaghie were undoubtedly broad, the finances of the laird unhurt by government exactions, and the house of Balmaghie a wide and pleasant place compared with the little square block-house of the Grenoch, sitting squatly like a moorhen's-nest on its verge of reedy loch.

So the Lady Susannah became, not long after Kate betook herself to Holland, the mistress of Balmaghie; but from some feeling of restraint or shame Roger McGhie had hitherto carefully kept the matter from his daughter, whose sentiments in the matter he had good reasons to suspect.

It had not seemed the least of the attractions of the house of Balmaghie to my lady that at the time of her marriage it wanted the presence of the girl who till now had been its mistress. And she resolved that, once out, Kate should abide so – that is, till the time came when a match politically and socially suitable could be found for the girl, and also a home not too near the well-trimmed garden pleasances of Balmaghie.

So when Murdo McAlister, Lord of Barra, arrived at the dismantled fortalice of Thrieve as the guest of my Lord Maxwell, and word was brought that the exile desired an audience with "the lady of Balmaghie," the duchess listened complacently enough to the words of the Lord of Barra and the Small Isles. The courtier dwelt much on the changes which were so sure to come, the favor of the king's son-in-law, his own great position in Holland, and the yet greater to be attained when his Dutch master should take over the throne of Britain.

And we may be sure that my Lord of Barra spoke well. Calmly he told of the dangerous position of the young maid in Holland; lightly he referred to his own "rescue" of her in the Street of the Butchery – of which, indeed, Kate had herself given an account in one of her rare letters to her father from the city of Amersfort. He told how she was quartered unsuitably with private soldiers and their wives. But there he trod on dangerous ground, for in a moment the laird took up his parable against him.

"Lochinvar and young Earlstoun may indeed be private soldiers in Dutchdom," said Roger McGhie, bluntly, "but do not forget that they are very good Galloway gentlemen here."

"Then," said Barra, "they had been greatly the better of remembering it in the Low Country. I speak with some heat, for I carry here in my side the unhealed wound dealt me in revenge by the knife of a girl of the streets whom Wat Gordon of Lochinvar took with him in his flight."

And still pale from his long illness, my Lord Barra in his dress of black velvet certainly appeared a most interesting figure to my lady of Balmaghie, who had a natural eye for such.

Then, taking courage from her evident sympathy, he went on to tell how with the help of Captain Smith of the Sea Unicorn, a respectable magistrate of the county of Dorset, he had again "rescued" Kate McGhie from her perilous position; how he had aided her to escape to the home of a lowland woman of good family, the wife of one of his own vassals, on the safe and suitable island of Suliscanna, to which place he asked the favor of the company, of "Her Grace" – he desired pardon – of the Lady Balmaghie and her husband.

Whereupon, with voluble good-will from the lady and a certain dry and silent acquiescence from Roger McGhie, my Lord of Barra obtained his request. And so behold them sitting together when the Sea Unicorn overhauled the tide-driven boat of our young adventurers, and the treacherous sea-mists delivered Kate and her lover into the hands of the enemies of their loves.

"You are very welcome on board the ship Sea Unicorn," said Barra, bowing to the pair as they stood hand-in-hand on the deck.

Wat could not utter a word, so appalling a hopelessness pressed upon his spirit, such blank despair tore like an eagle at his heart.

But the lady of Balmaghie smiled upon him, even as of old her Grace the Duchess of Wellwood had done. Then she shook her head with coquettish reproach.

"Ah, Lochinvar," she cooed, "what is this we have heard of you? You come on board the Sea Unicorn off the isle of Suliscanna with one fair maid; you left the city of Amersfort with another. I fear me you have as little as ever of the grace of constancy. But after all, young men, alas! still will be young men. And indeed the age is noways a constant one!"

And my lady sighed as if the fatal gifts of constancy and continence had been the ever-present blights of her own life.

Then, suddenly as the lightning that shines from east to west, it flashed upon Wat how foolish he had been not to tell Kate all the story of the Little Marie. He realized now how easily, nay, how inevitably, all that had happened at the prison and among the sand-dunes might be used to his hurt. So, flushing to the temples, he stood silent.

Kate turned to her lover. A happy light of confidence shone in her eye.

"Tell my lady," she said, "that in her eagerness to think well of you according to her lights, she has given ear to false rumors. Tell her that it was to rescue me from the cruel treachery of my Lord Barra that you broke the prison bars and came over land and sea to take me out of his hands."

Barra smiled subtly, looking keenly at Wat from under the drooping eyelids of his triangular eyes, which glittered like the points of bayonets.

"It is indeed true," said Wat, at last, forcing himself to speak, "that I – that I escaped out of prison and traced this maid over land and sea till I found her a captive on the island of Suliscanna. It was my intention – "

"To return her to her father's care, no doubt," said Barra, dropping his words carefully, like poison into a bowl.

"To beseech her to wed with me so soon as I should reach the main-land," said Wat, bravely.

A change came over the countenance of my Lady Wellwood at the words. Though she had married Roger McGhie, it was not in her nature to let any former gallant cavalier escape her snares, nor yet to permit her plans of great political alliances in the future, based upon the girl's union with Barra, to be brought to naught.

But again the sneering voice of Barra cut the embarrassing silence.

"It was, then, I doubt not, in the company of this lady, whose hand you hold, that you drugged the jailer of Amersfort, broke the prison, and escaped. It was this lady who, being well acquainted with the purlieus of that temple of harlotry, the Hostel of the Coronation, stole three horses from Sheffell, the landlord, and rode with you and your boon companion Scarlett – a man false to as many services as he has sworn allegiance to – out to the sand-dunes of Lis, where you and she abode till you found a passage to England. In all this you had, doubtless, the companionship and assistance of no other woman than this lady, whom with such noble and honorable condescension you now desire to marry. She it was (declare it briefly, true swain) who lied for you, stole for you, fought for you, abode with you, died for you – as the catch has it, 'all for love and nothing for reward.'"

At the close of Barra's speech Kate turned to Wat.

"Tell them," she said, "that there was no such woman with you."

CHAPTER XLI

LOVE THAT THINKETH NO EVIL

Wat stood silent, his face turning slowly from red to ashen white. What an arrant fool he had been, not to tell her all in those sweet hours on the island of Fiara – a score of Little Maries had mattered nothing to her then. Then everything would have been plain and easy. His conscience was indeed perfectly clear. But, partly because with the willing forgetfulness of an ardent lover he had forgotten, and partly because he had shrunk from marring with the name of another those precious hours of blissful communion of which he had hitherto enjoyed so few, he had neglected to tell Kate the tale. He saw his mistake now.

"Tell them, Wat," urged Kate, confidently, "tell them all."

"Aye, tell them all," repeated Barra, grimly, between his teeth, "tell them all your late love did for you, beginning with the favors of which your cousin Will and I were witnesses in the gilded room of the Hostel of the Coronation. Begin at the bottom – with the lady's shoe and the toast you drank out of that most worthy cup!"

Wat still stood silent before them. Kate dropped his hand perplexed, looking into his tragic face with bewildered, uncomprehending eyes.

"Why, Wat, what is the matter, dear love – tell them everything, whatever it is. Do not fear for me," whispered Kate, her true, earnest eyes, full of all faith and love, bent upon him without doubt or question.

"I cannot," he said, hoarsely, at last; "I ought to have told you before – it is so difficult now. But I will tell you all – there is no shame in it when all is told. No, do not take my hand till I have finished."

Then quite clearly and briefly Wat recounted all that had happened to the Little Marie – not sparing himself in the matter of the Inn of the Coronation, where he had been found by Will Gordon and Barra, but chiefly insisting upon the noble self-sacrifice of the girl and her death, welcome and sweet to her because of her love and repentance.

But the tale was told on board the Sea Unicorn under a double burden of difficulty. For the teller was conscious that he ought long ago to have confessed all this to his love; and then the story itself, simple and beautiful in its facts, was riddled and blasted by the bitter comments of Barra, and tinctured to base issues by his blighting sneers.

As Wat went on Kate drooped her head on her breast and clasped her hands before her. Even the love-light was for the moment dimmed in her proud eyes, but only with indignant tears, that her love should so be put to shame before those whom she would have given her life to see compelled to hold him in honor.

The heavy weight of unbelief against which he felt himself pleading in vain, gradually proved too much for Wat Gordon. He stopped abruptly and flung his hand impatiently out.

"I cannot go on," he said; "my words are not credited – of what use is it?"

"As you say, my Lord Lochinvar, of what use is it?" sneered Barra. "That you know best yourself. You were asked a plain question – whether the maid who accompanied you on the first part of your wondrous Ulysses wanderings was the same with whom you arrived on board the Sea Unicorn. To that plain question you have only returned a very crooked answer. Have you nothing else that you can say to finish the lie in a more workmanlike fashion?"

"Jack Scarlett – Scarlett, come hither!" Wat cried, suddenly.

And the master-at-arms, who very characteristically had gone forward to berth with the sailors, came aft as the men on deck passed the word for him.

"Will you tell this lady," said Wat, "what you know of my acquaintance with the Little Marie?"

Whereupon, soberly and plainly, like a soldier, John Scarlett told his tale. But for all the effect it had upon the listeners he might just as well have spoken it to the solan-geese diving in the bay. Wat saw the unbelief settle deeper on the face of Roger McGhie, and the very demon of jealousy and malice wink from under the eyelids of my Lady Wellwood.

"I have a question to ask you, my noble captain of various services," said Barra, "a question concerning this girl and your gallant companion. What did you first think when this Marie joined you with the horses – in page's dress, as I have heard you say – and what when she told you that she had stabbed your friend's enemy and hers to the death?"

"I thought what any other man would think," answered Scarlett, brusquely.

"And afterwards among the sand-dunes of Lis you discovered that all this devotion arose merely from noble, pure, unselfish, platonic love?"

The old soldier was more than a little perplexed by Barra's phrases, which he did not fully understand.

"Yes," he answered at last, with a hesitation which told more against his story than all he had said before.

Barra was quick to seize his advantage.

"You see how faithfully these comrades stick to each other – how touching is such fidelity. The intention is so excellent, even when truth looks out in spite of them through the little joins in the patchwork."

"God!" cried Scarlett, fiercely. "I would I had you five minutes at a rapier's end for a posturing, lying knave – a pitiful, putty-faced dog! I cannot answer your words, though I know them to be mere tongue-shuffling. But with my sword – yes, I could answer with that!"