Lochinvar: A Novel. Crockett Samuel Rutherford

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СКАЧАТЬ stand at the other side of the fire from Maisie, but now he looked in vain for her. Yet she had not left the room. Only at the first word of kissing she had entrenched herself behind a great oaken settle and on the farther side of a wide Dutch table, where, with her head bent upon an earthenware bowl, she began to prepare a salad with the most absolute attention and studious care.

      Having kissed Maisie most dutifully, Wat went forward to offer his hand to Kate. She gave hers to him quickly, and yet, as it seemed to him, reluctantly also. Instinctively she kept a chair between them as she did so.

      "See, it is all over with oil and chopped lettuce," she said, looking plaintively at her hand, as though Wat had been personally responsible for the defilement.

      Maisie was at the farther end of the room, bending over her saucepans. Wat leaned quickly across the table to Kate.

      "Are you glad I have come back?" he asked, in a low voice.

      "You had a fine morning for your ride," she replied, looking down at the salad and mixing the ingredients with the most scrupulous exactitude.

      Wat straightened himself instantaneously as if on parade, and stalked with much dignity to the end of the room at which Maisie was still busy.

      And this caused him to miss a singular look which Kate cast after him, a look of mingled pity and entreaty, wholly wasted on the square shoulders and erect head, but from which, had Wat caught it, he might have learned that though it may sometimes be well to appear proud with a girl, nevertheless, if you love her, not too soon and not too often.

      Presently Will Gordon came bustling down to breakfast, having cleaned his accoutrements and adorned himself with such sober trappings as were permitted by the Spartan taste of the Covenanting regiment. Will had still that noisily cheerful self-consciousness which always characterizes the very young husband doing the unaccustomed honors of his house.

      "Sit down and be welcome, Wat, lad," he cried, "and tell us all the tale of your journeying."

      And so at the table which Maisie had covered with plain coarse Dutch linen, very unlike the fine cloths which she had left behind her in Scotland, the four sat down. It was a heartsome meal, and after a little while Lochinvar began to tell his tale, giving himself little honor, making nothing of the danger, and dwelling much on the ridiculous aspect of Haxo the Bull, his ill-favored Calf, and his bald-headed Killer.

      As the tale proceeded Will kept up a constant fire of interjections, such as "That was well thought on!" "Bravely! my lad!" and "Well done, Glenkens!" But presently Maisie left her seat, and came round to sit beside Wat as he began to tell of entering alone at midnight into the dark house of Brederode with the unknown danger before and the three traitors behind. All the time Kate sat still, saying nothing and eating nothing, her lips a little open and tremulous, and her dark eyes shining with a light in them like a sunbeam in the still water of a sea cave.

      And when it came to the telling of the combat, and the little chance of life that he had, it so fared that Wat raised his eyes to Kate's, and lo! tears were running silently down her face and falling unregarded on her white gown.

      In a moment more she had risen and left the table, slipping like a gleam of light into the next room.

      Maisie looked up with much astonishment as she caught the waft of the girl's gown.

      "Why, Kate!" she exclaimed, and without another word sped after her. When she reached the little room where Kate slept, she found the girl standing by the window, leaning her head against the thin curtain. She kept her back to her friend, and did not turn round at her entrance. Maisie carefully closed the door and went up quickly to Kate. Silently she put her arm about the slim and supple waist.

      "I – I am not crying – I am not indeed!" said Kate, a little indignantly, putting her hand on her friend's wrist as if to push it away.

      "No – no, of course you are not," said Maisie, making (to say the least of it) an affirmation the truth of which was not wholly obvious. For the girl's tears dropped steadily upon her white gown, a great one even falling warm upon Maisie's hand at her waist, while all her slender body was shaken with sobs.

      "It was only – " Kate began, and then stopped.

      Maisie sighed as she sat down on the white bed, which, as was its occupant's custom, had been made up with military precision quite an hour before. She drew Kate down beside her gently till the girl's head rested on her shoulders.

      "There, there, my lamb," she whispered, soothingly, when at last Kate found what most she wanted – a soft and comfortably sympathetic surface to cry upon. Maisie's hand passed lightly over the shapely head with its straying and enticing thatch of dark love-locks, and her voice crooned and cooed over her friend like a dove over its mate in the nest. Then for a long time she continued to hush the girl in her arms, as if she had been but a little ailing child.

      Once there came the sound of a foot heavily masculine in the passage, and a hand was laid on the latch. Kate made a motion to rise and dry her face, but Maisie's arms held her tight.

      "Go away, William! Go away at once!" she cried, with instant change of tone, her voice ringing out in such imperious fashion that Will Gordon, her husband, fled back to the sitting-room, feeling that he had just saved himself on the brink of some absolutely fatal mistake.

      Yet all the while Maisie offered her friend not a word of sympathy, only the comforting of silent understanding, the touch of loving lips and hands, and the pressure of loving arms. Kate (she said to herself) would tell her what she wished at her own time. Maisie had a woman's tact and did not press for an explanation of a girl's wayward moods, as even the wisest of men would have done on such an occasion.

      "Oh, he might have been killed," at last Kate's words came in a rushing whisper, as she lifted her face a little higher on Maisie's shoulder. "And I had sent him away so cruelly. And when he came back I never told him that I was glad to see him, Maisie. I snatched away my hand." She added the last words as if that indefensible action had only crowned a long series of enormities.

      "Well," answered her friend, smiling very lovingly down at her, "he is not gone yet. Come back and say it now. I dare say he will forgive you, if you look at him like that."

      But Kate only sadly shook her head, a little reproachfully that such a revolutionary proposal should come from one of Maisie's pretended sympathy and understanding.

      "How can I go back?" she said, hopelessly. "They saw me crying, and they would sit and look at me all the time – like – like – " (and Kate paused while she searched the universe for a comparison to express the most utter and abject stupidity) "well, just like men."

      Yet she sighed and turned her face a little more inward towards Maisie's shoulder. "No, decidedly," she said, as if after all she had been considering the question; "I cannot go back."

      Maisie loosened her arms from about Kate's neck. "Then you shall not, sweeting," she said, with determination, as if a coercive army had been at hand; "lie you still there and I will get them away. Trust me, they shall know no more than it is good for men to know."

      And she nodded her head to express the limited capacity of mankind, and the absolute necessity that there was for the wiser portion of the race to maintain them in a condition of strictly defined and diplomatic ignorance.

      Before she went out of the bedroom Maisie set by the girl's side a small bottle of the sweet-scented water of Cologne, one which Wat himself had brought back from his last campaign. "He carried that nearly a year in his haversack," Maisie said, irrelevantly, as she set the vial within reach of Kate's hand. "I will go send him to take a bath. He must have ridden СКАЧАТЬ