Lochinvar: A Novel. Crockett Samuel Rutherford

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СКАЧАТЬ to Mistress Kate, since she is not here to bid me farewell for herself. In what, think you, have I offended her?"

      "Nay, Wat," answered the gentle Maisie, "concerning that you must e'en find means of judging for yourself on your return."

      "But listen, Cousin Maisie, this venture that I go upon is a quest of life or death to me, and many are the chances that I may not return at all."

      "I will even go speak with my gossip Kate, and see whether she will come to bid you good prospering on your adventure and a safe return from it."

      And so saying Maisie passed from the room as silently as a white swan swims athwart the mere. In a little while she returned with Kate, who, beside her budding matronhood, seemed but a young lissom slip of willow-wand.

      "Here, Kate," said Maisie, as she entered holding her friend by the hand, "is our cousin Wat, come in on us to bid farewell. He goes a far road and on a heavy adventure. He would say good-bye to the friends who are with him in this strange land before he departs, and of these you are one, are you not, my Kate?"

      As soon as Mistress Maisie loosened her hand the girl went directly to the window-seat, where she stood leaning gracefully with her cheek laid softly against the shutter. She turned a little and shivered at her friend's pointed appeal.

      "If Walter Gordon says it, it must be so," she answered, with certain quiet bitterness.

      Lochinvar was deeply stung by her words. He came somewhat nearer to her, clasping his hands nervously before him, his face set and pale as it had never been in the presence of an enemy.

      "Kate," he said, "I ask you again, wherein have I so grievously offended you that, on your coming to this land of exile, you should treat me like a dog – yes, worse than a wandering cur-dog. It is true that once long ago I was foolish – to blame, blackly and bitterly in the wrong, if you will. But now all humbly I ask you to forgive me ere I go, it may be to my death."

      The girl looked at him with a strange light in her eyes – scorn, pity, and self-will struggling together for the mastery.

      At last, in a hard, dry voice, she said, "There is nothing to forgive. If there had been I should have forgiven you. As it is, I have only forgotten."

      Maisie had left the room and there was deep silence in it and about, save for the distant crying of the staid Dutch children late at their plays on the canal-sides of Amersfort, and the clatter of the home-returning wooden shoon on the pavemented streets. The young man drew himself up till his height towered above the girl like a watch-tower over a city wall. His eyes rested steadfastly on her the while. She had a feeling that a desperate kind of love was in the air, and that for aught she knew he might be about to clasp her fiercely in his arms. And it had, perhaps, been well for both if he had, for at that moment she raised her eyes and her heart wavered within her. He looked so tall and strong. She was sure that her head would come no higher upon his breast than the blue ribbon of his cavalry shoulder-knot. She wondered if his arms would prove as strong as they looked, if she suddenly were to find herself folded safe within them.

      "Kate," he said, wistfully, coming nearer to her.

      Now Wat Gordon ought not to have spoken. The single word in the silence of the room brought the girl back to herself. Instinctively she put out her hand, as though to ward off something threatening or overpowering. The gulf yawned instantly between them, and the full flood-tide of Wat Gordon's opportunity ebbed away as rapidly as it had flowed.

      Yet when a moment later the girl lifted her long, dark lashes and revealed her eyes shining shyly glorious beneath them, Wat Gordon gazed into their depths till his breath came quick and short through his nostrils, and a peal of bells seemed to jangle all out of tune in his heart. He stood like some shy woodland beast new taken in a trap.

      "Well?" she said, inquiringly, yet somewhat more softly than she had yet spoken.

      Wat clinched his fist. In that single syllable the girl seemed to lay all the burden of blame, proof, explanation of the past upon him alone, and the hopeless magnitude of the task cut him to the quick.

      "Kate!" he cried, "I will not again ask you to forgive me; but if I do not come back, at least believe that I died more worthily than perhaps I have lived – though neither have I ever lived so as to shame you, even had you seen me at my worst. And, ere I go, give me at least a love-token that I may carry it with me till I die."

      Kate's lips parted as though she had somewhat to answer if she would, but she kept a faintly smiling silence instead, and only looked casually about the room. A single worn glove lay on the top of a little cabinet of dark oak. She lifted it and handed it to Wat. The young man eagerly seized the glove, pressed it with quick passion to his lips, and then thrust it deep into the bosom of his military coat. He would have taken the hand which gave him the gift, but a certain malicious innocence in the girl's next words suddenly dammed his gratitude at the fountain-head.

      "I have nothing of my own to give," she said, "for I have just newly come off the sea. But this glove of Maisie's will mayhap serve as well. Besides which, I heard her say yestreen that she had some time ago lost its marrow in the market-place of Amersfort."

      With a fierce hand Wat Gordon tore the glove from his bosom and threw it impulsively out of the window into the canal. Then he squared his shoulders and turned him about in order to stride haughtily and indignantly from the room.

      But even as he went he saw a quaintly subtle amusement shining in the girl's eyes – laughter made lovely by the possibility of indignant tears behind it, and on her perfectest lips that quick petulant pout which had seemed so adorable to him in the old days when he had laid so many ingenious snares to bring it out. Wat was intensely piqued – more piqued perhaps than angry. He who had wooed great ladies, and on whom in the ante-chambers of kings kind damsels all too beautiful had smiled till princes waxed jealous, was now made a mock of by a slim she-slip compact of mischievous devices. He looked again and yet more keenly at the girl by the window. Certainly it was so. Mischief lurked quaintly but unmistakably under the demure, upward curl of those eyelashes. A kind of still, calm fury took him, a set desperation like that of battle.

      "I will take my own love-token," he cried, striding suddenly over to her.

      And so, almost but not quite, ere Kate was aware, he had stooped and kissed her.

      Then, in an instant, as soon indeed as he had realized his deed, all his courage went from him. His triumph of a moment became at once flat despair, and he stood before her ashamed, abject as a dog that is caught in a fault and trembles for the lash.

      Without a word the girl pointed to the door. And such was the force of her white anger and scorn upon him that Wat Gordon, who was about to ride carelessly to face death as he had often done before, slunk through it cowering and speechless.

      Maisie was coming along the little boarded passage as he passed out.

      "Farewell, cousin," she said to him. "Will you not bid me good-bye again ere you go, if only for the old sake's sake?"

      But Wat Gordon went past her as though he had not heard, trampling stupidly down the narrow stairs like a bullock in the market-place, the spring all gone out of his foot, the upstanding airy defiance fallen away from his carriage.

      Then in a moment more there came up from the street front the sound of trampling horses and the ring of accoutrement, as three or four riders set spurs to their horses and rode clattering over the cobbles towards the city gates.

      Maisie went quickly into the sitting-room to her friend.

      "What have you been doing to my Wat?" she asked, grasping СКАЧАТЬ