Lochinvar: A Novel. Crockett Samuel Rutherford

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes continued to rest on those of the younger girl, who remained thus reclined on her gossip's lap. She had not moved at his entrance, but only looked at him very quietly from under those shadowy curtains which had gained her the name of Kate of the Dark Lashes. Then in a moment Wat set his hand to his breast suddenly, as if a bullet had struck him upon the field of battle.

      "Kate!" he cried, in a quick, hoarse whisper, as though the word had been forced from him.

      And for a long moment the young soldier stood still and speechless, with his eyes still fixed upon the girl.

      "Walter, mind you not my dearest friend and gossip Kate, and how in old sad days in the dear far-away land we there underwent many things together?" asked Maisie Lennox, looking up somewhat doubtfully from her friend's face into that of Walter Gordon.

      "I did not know – I had not heard – " were all the words that the young squire of dames could find to utter.

      "Also there were, if I remember aright," the young matron went on, with that fatal blundering which sometimes comes to the kindest and most quick-witted of women, "certain passages between you – of mutual friendship and esteem, as it might be."

      Then, with a single swift movement, lithe and instantaneous as that of a young wild animal which has never known restraint, Kate of the Dark Lashes rose to her feet.

      "Walter Gordon of Lochinvar," she said, "is a Scottish gentleman. He will never be willing to remember that which a lady chooses to forget."

      But Lochinvar himself, readiest tongue in wit-play as well as keenest blade when the steel clashed in sterner debate, on this occasion spake never a word. For in that moment in which he had looked upon Kate McGhie resting her beautiful head upon her clasped hands in her friend's lap he had fallen from the safe heights of admiration into the bottomless abysses of love.

      While the pair were still standing thus face to face, and before Kate sat down again in a more restrained posture on the low-cushioned window-seat, Will Gordon strode in and set his musket in a corner. He was habited simply enough in the dark gray of the Hill Folks' regiment, with the cross of St. Andrew done in blue and white upon his breast. His wife rose to kiss him as he entered, and then, still holding her by the hand, he turned to the tall, slim girl by the window.

      "Why, Kate, lass, how came the good winds to blow you hither from the lands of mist over the sea?" he asked.

      "Blasts of ill winds in Scotland, well I wot," said Kate McGhie, smiling at him faintly and holding out her hand.

      "Then the ill Scots winds have certainly blown us good here in Holland," he answered, deftly enough, in the words of the ancient Scottish proverb.

      But the girl went on without giving heed to his kindly compliment.

      "The persecution waxes ever hotter and hotter on the hills of the south," she said, "and what with the new sheriffs, and the raging of the red-wud Grier of Lag over all our country of Galloway, I saw that it could not be long before my doings and believings brought my easy-tempered father into trouble. So, as soon as I knew that, I mounted me and rode to Newcastle, keeping mostly to the hills, and avoiding the highways by which the king's soldiers come and go. There, after some wearisome and dangerous waiting, I got a ship to Rotterdam. And here I am to sorn upon you!"

      She ended with a little gesture of opening her hands and flinging them from her, which Wat Gordon thought very pretty to behold.

      "You are as welcome to our poor soldier's lodging as though it had been the palace of the stadtholder," answered William Gordon – with, nevertheless, a somewhat perplexed look, as he thought of another mouth to be fed upon the scanty and uncertain pay of a private in the Scottish regiments of the prince.

      While his cousin was speaking Wat Gordon had made his way round the table to the corner of the latticed window farthest from Kate, where now he stood looking thoughtfully upon the broad canal and the twinkling lights which were beginning to mark out its banks.

      "Why, Wat," cried his cousin Will, clapping him lovingly upon the shoulder as he went past him to hang up his blue sash on a hook by the window, "wherefore so sad-visaged, man? This whey face and dour speechlessness might befit an erewhile Whig gardener of Balmaghie, with his hod and mattock over his shoulder; but it sets ill with a gay rider in Douglas's dragoons, and one high in favor in the prince's service."

      Lochinvar shook off his cousin's hand a little impatiently. He wanted nothing better than just to go on watching Kate McGhie's profile as it outlined itself against the broad, shining reach of water. He marvelled that he had been aforetime so blind to its beauty; but then these ancient admirations in Scotland had been only lightness of heart and a young man's natural love of love-making. But Walter Gordon knew that this which had stricken him to the heart, as he came suddenly upon the girl pillowing her head on her palms at Maisie's knee, was no mere love-making. It was love.

      "Who were on duty to-day at headquarters?" Wat asked, gruffly enough.

      "Who but Barra and his barbarians of the Isles!" William Gordon made answer.

      Wat stamped his foot boyishly and impatiently.

      "The prince shows these dogs overmuch of his favor," he said.

      Will Gordon went to the chamber door and opened it. Then he looked back at his wife.

      "Come hither, sweetheart," he said. "It is pay-day, and I must e'en give thee my wages, ere I be tempted to spend them with fly-by-night dragoons and riotous night-rakes like our cousin here. Also, I must consult thee concerning affairs of state – thy housewifery and the price of candles belike!"

      Obediently Maisie rose and followed him out of the room, gliding, as was her manner, softly through the door like water that runs down a mill-lade. Kate of the Dark Lashes, on the contrary, moved with the flash and lightsome unexpectedness of a swallow in flight. Yet now she sat still enough by the dusky window, looking out upon the twinkling lights which, as they multiplied, began to be reflected on the waters of the long, straight canal.

      For a while Wat Gordon was content silently to watch the changeful shapeliness of her head. He had never seen one set at just that angle upon so charming a neck. He wondered why this girl had so suddenly grown all wonderful to him. It was strange that hitherto he should have been so crassly blind. But now he was perfectly content only to watch and to be silent, so that it was Kate who first felt the necessity for speech.

      "This is a strange new land," she said, thoughtfully, "and it is little wonder that to-night my heart is heavy, for I am yet a stranger in it."

      "Kate," said Wat Gordon, in a low, earnest tone, leaning a little nearer to her as she sat on the window-seat, "Kate, is there not, then, all the more reason to remember old friends?"

      "And have I not remembered?" answered the girl, swiftly, without looking at him. "I have come from my father's house straight to Maisie Lennox – I, a girl, and alone. She is my oldest friend."

      "But are there, then, no others?" said the young man, jealously.

      "None who have never forgotten, never slighted, never complained, never faltered in their love, save only my sweet Maisie Lennox," returned the girl, as she rose from her place and went towards the door, from behind which came the soft hum of voices in friendly conference.

      Wat took two swift steps forward as if to forestall her, but she slipped past him, light as the shadow of a leaf windblown along the wall, and laid her hand on the latch.

      "Will not you let me be your friend once again after these weary years?" he asked, eagerly.

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