Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Lochinvar: A Novel

CHAPTER XVII
JACK SCARLETT CALLS HIMSELF A FOOL

Wat and his companion passed along the deserted streets of Amersfort, keeping carefully to those which were darkest and least frequented. For a space neither spoke. But as they were crossing a wide, deserted square, the Little Marie broke the silence with a startling speech.

"I think by this time he will be dead," she said, simply, as though she had said that it rained.

"Think who will be dead?" queried Wat, stopping instantly and facing her.

"Why, your enemy!" replied the Little Marie, calmly; "but let us go on lest the watch should come by and stop us."

"My enemy!" exclaimed Walter, putting his hand to his brow like one bewildered.

"Aye," said Marie, "the man you showed me and told me was your enemy – the dark man called Barra, the provost-marshal. I, the Little Marie, struck him in the side with a knife as he was mounting his horse to ride away – methinks I know whither. At any rate, it was on an evil quest. He rides on no others. Did I not tell you that he was my enemy before he was yours?"

"Struck my Lord Barra – with a knife, Marie?" stammered Wat. His slow Northern blood had not dreamed of such swift vengeance.

"Aye," said the girl, anxiously; "did I not do right? He was mine enemy, true. He it was who first brought me hither, left me friendless in this city of Satan, made me that which men think me. But had that been all his fault he might have lived. After all, that sin was mine as well as his. I struck him because he was your enemy, and because you hated him. Did I not well?"

"Marie," said Wat, very soberly, "you and I are as good as dead for this. Did any see you strike?"

"Aye, marry, there were," she replied, carelessly; "but I was well wrapped about in a red cloak and wore the cap and ear-plates of a peasant woman of Frisia. There were several that stood curiously about as I went near to hand him my petition at his own door. But what with the night, the reeling of the torches, and the instant confusion, none put out a hand to stay me as I went away. And I think he will surely be dead by this!"

She spoke the words dispassionately, like one who has done an unpleasing duty and has no further concern nor stake in the matter.

Instinctively their feet had turned into the street of Zaandpoort. Wat's heart suddenly leaped within him. He had come to see the house where he had been happy for a few hours. He would look just once upon the window whence his love had often looked forth, and at that other within which her dear head would even now be lying, shedding soft dishevelled curls distractingly over the pillow – ah! the heart-sickness! To think that never should he see it thus, never now lay his own close beside it, as in wild visions of the night he had often dreamed of doing.

But there shone a light from the living-room of Will Gordon's lodging. Shadows moved restlessly across the blind. The house in Zaandpoort Street was still awake and stirring.

Wat took a sudden resolution. He would risk all, and for the last time look upon the woman he adored, even though he knew she loved him not.

"Hide here a moment, Marie," Wat said to his companion; "over there in the dark of the archway. This is the house of my cousin, a soldier from my own country of Scotland. I would bid him farewell before I go."

The young girl looked wistfully at him, and laid her hand quickly on her heart.

"Ah, it is the house of your love – I know it," she said, sadly and reproachfully; "and you have said so often that none loved you – that none cared for you."

Wat smiled the pale ghost of a smile, unseen in the darkness of the night.

"It is true that once on a time I loved one dwelling in this house. But she loved me not – "

"It is impossible," moaned Marie. "I know that she must have loved you – "

"No, she loved me not," answered Wat; "but, as I think, she loved the man whom you – "

Wat stepped back into shadow, and Marie clutched his cloak with a nervous hand. It was Will Gordon who came down the stairs. Haggered, unshaven, looking straight before him with set eyes, he was not the same man who had come so cosily back from the guard-room of the palace the night before with his wife upon his arm.

Wat advanced a pace out of the dark of the arch. He held out his hand.

"Will," he said, "with you I quarrelled not. And I think that if your wife, who used to be so stanchly my friend, knew my broken heart, she, too, would forgive my hasty words, and be ready to understand evil appearances that were no more than appearances."

But Will Gordon did not take the outstretched hand which Wat held a moment in the air and then dropped sadly to his side.

"Tell me first," he said, "where you have hidden our Kate, and what you have to do with the killing of my Lord of Barra? After that I will either take your hand or set my sword in your heart."

"Will Gordon!" cried Wat, starting back, "was it for this that we two kept Wellwood's men at bay under the arch at Holyrood? For this that we lay shoulder to shoulder on the chill moors, that in these latter days you should charge me with crimes of which I know nothing? Hidden Kate? Why, is not Kate here, behind the glass of that window? Does she not sleep soundly, recking nothing of evil or the sorrow of others, upon her bed? Is not her maiden heart as ever free and careless – "

"Wat, I believe you, lad," said Will; "it was a hasty and ill-conceived thought of mine. I know you love us all overmuch to bring harm to our lassie. But, certainly, Kate is lost – has been carried off – and now they are seeking her everywhere, charging her, forsooth, with the slaying of my Lord Barra."

At the last words Wat laughed a little scornful laugh.

He had not yet taken in the terrible import of the news concerning Kate's loss. But it seemed a foolishly monstrous thing that even in jest she should be charged with the death of Barra, while not ten yards behind him, in the dark of the arched doorway, stood the Little Marie, with her dagger scarcely dry in her garter.

Then, after a moment, Will's first words suddenly came back to him, as if they had been echoed from the tall buildings which stood about them.

"You do not mean it – Kate gone?" he said, dully, and without comprehension; "it is impossible. Who so wicked in all this land as to have done the thing?"

Then Will told him all the tale of the false message and of their home-coming.

"It is Barra's trick – what other?" Wat said, at once; "I saw that he loved her – if such a poisonous reptile can love. But I thought not that even he could devise her wrong, else had I slain him on the spot."

Wat meditated a little while in silence. "Did Kate tell you if he had spoken aught to her of love?"

"He offered her the most honorable marriage, and yet greater things when the prince should come to his own. But she would have none of him," replied Will Gordon.

"It is enough," cried Wat. "Certainly this is an affair of my lord's. Dead or alive, I will trace out his plots till I find his trail. It may be, after all, but a matter of Haxo the Bull, his Calf, and his Killer. Give me no more than a sword and pistols, and my belt with the gold that is in your strong-box."

"Will you not come up with me, Wat?" said Will Gordon. "Come, cousin."

"Nay," said Wat, "there is not time. It is but now that I have escaped from their prison. In an hour there will be the hue-and-cry, and then they will surely search your house. I must be far on the sea-road by daybreak. Only furnish me with necessities, cousin mine, and let me go. My humblest service to your wife – but tell her not till after I am gone!"

Will Gordon went back up the stairs. Presently he was down again with the weapons, with enough and to spare of ammunition, a loaf of wheaten bread, a flask of wine, and the broad leathern belt with the gold-pieces, which slipped down like a weighty serpent as he laid it in Wat's hands. The money had been kept sacred for just such an emergency.

The cousins bade each other a kindly adieu in the fashion of other and happier times, and then Will Gordon returned sadly to his wife.

Wat stepped back to the shelter where he had left Marie, but she was not to be seen. He looked every way and called softly; but the girl had vanished.

"It is perhaps as well!" he said, the Scot's prudence within him warring with his gratitude towards the girl who had twice risked her life for him without thought of reward.

He took his way alone across the broad squares and over the canals to Jack Scarlett's lodgings. There was a light in the window as he approached. He knocked gently, and a gruff voice ordered him to come in, or else (as an equally satisfactory alternative) to proceed incontinently to quite other regions.

Wat entered, and there, seated upon the side of his bed, he found Scarlett with one boot off and the other still upon his foot. His eyes were set in his head, and a kindly, idiotic smile was frozen on his face.

At the sight of Wat, pale as death, with his clothes frayed and disarranged with his long sojourn in prison, Scarlett started up. With a vigorous wave of his hand he motioned his visitor away.

"Avaunt! as the clerks say. Get away, briskly, or I will say the Lord's Prayer at thee (that's if I can remember it). Come not near a living man. Wat Gordon in the flesh with a long sword was bad enough; but Wat Gordon dead, with an unshaven chin and clothed out of a rag-shop, is a thousand times worse. Alas, that it should come so soon to this! I am shamed to be such a shaveling in my cups! Yet of a truth I drank only seven bottles and a part of an eighth. This comes of being a poor orphan, and being compelled to drink the most evil liquor of this unfriendly country!"

"Scarlett," said Wat, seriously, "listen to me. I am going on a long quest. Will you come with me? I need a companion now as a man never needed comrade before! Mine enemy has stolen my love, and I go to find her!"

"Away – get away!" cried Scarlett. "I want not to die yet awhile. I desire time to repent – that is, when I grow old enough to repent. There is Sergeant Hilliard over there at the end of the passage," he went on, eagerly, as if a famous idea had struck him, "his hair is gray, if you like, and he has a most confounded gout. He will gladly accompany you. Be advised, kind ghost. Have the goodness to cross the stairway to Hilliard. Remember, I was ever thy friend in life, Wat Gordon!"

"Beshrew your tipsy, idiot soul," thundered Wat, rising in a towering passion; "have you drunk so much that you know not a living man from one dead and damned? I will teach thee the difference, and that sharply."

And with that he went over to the bedside, and banged Scarlett's head soundly against the rafters of the garret, exclaiming at every thump and crash, "I pray you, Jack Scarlett, say when you are convinced that Wat Gordon is flesh and blood, and not an airy ghost."

It did not take much of this most potent logic to persuade the ghost-seer that he had to do with Wat Gordon in his own proper and extremely able-bodied person.

"Enough!" he cried; "hold your hands, Wat. Could you not have said as much at first, and not stood gaping there like a week-old corpse done up in a winding-sheet?"

"Thou donnert ass!" cried Wat. "Will you come with me on my quest, or will you bide on here in Amersfort among putty-souled huxters teaching shambling recruits how to stand upon their legs?"

"Of a truth, Buchan's knaves are indeed most hopeless. Yet whither can I go? I know not of a better service," said Scarlett, shaking his head doubtfully.

"But the adventure, man," cried Wat; "think of the adventure over seas, through continents, upon far islands, all in quest of a true lass that hath been trapped by devils, and may be treated most uncivilly. It makes me mad!"

"All these are most extremely well for you, Wat Gordon of Lochinvar. You are a younger man, and these bones of mine like well to lie on a soft bed at my age. Also, and chiefly, the lass is your lass, and not mine. Were you to find her to-morrow, what should I get out of all the errant jackassery in the world?"

"John Scarlett," cried Wat, nodding his head, solemnly, "thy heart is grown no better than a chunk of fat lard. There is no spirit in thee any more. Go, turn over on thy side and snore, till it be time to go forth once more to drill thy rotten sheep's regiment. God kens, 'tis all you are good for now, to be bell-wether to such a shuffling, clod-hopping crew. 'Keep your head up! Fall not over your musket! Prod up that man in the rear! I pray you do not hold your gun as if it were a dandling baby! March!' Pshaw! John Scarlett, is that the life for a man or for a puddle-rolling pig of the stye?"

Scarlett appeared to consider. He looked at the nails in the sole of his boot with an air of grave deliberation, as if they could help him to a decision.

"'Tis true, in truth most truly true," he said, "it is a dog's life. But, after all, there is ever the chance of war."

"War? And will not I give thee wars to fill thy belly, and leave something over for stuffing to thy calves?" cried Wat. "Why, man, thy sword will never be in its sheath – fighting, seeking, spying, we will overpass land and sea, hiding by heather and hill, creeping down by the bonny burnside to win our speckled breakfasts out of the pools – "

"Tush, man," answered Scarlett, pettishly, "for all you know, your Kate may be shut up in the next street. And besides, as I said, after all, she is your lass, not mine."

Wat stepped back with a fine gesture of renunciation.

"Well," he said, "has it come to this? Never did I think to see the day when Jack Scarlett – old Jack Scarlett of the wrist-of-steel – would turn sheep and be afraid to set his shoulder to Wat Gordon's, or even to cross blades with him, as he did the other night in the Inn of Brederode. But old Jack has become no better than a gross, rotten, grease-lined crock, and – Lord, Lord, such a flock as he leads on parade after him!"

"S'blood! I will e'en break thy head, Wat, an' thou cease not thy cackle. Now I will come with thee just to prove I am no sheep. No, nor craven either. But only the greatest and completest old fool that ever held a commission from a brave prince and one of the few good paymasters in Europe."

With this Jack Scarlett rose, and did upon him his cloak and all his fighting-gear with an air grave and sullen, as though he were going to his own beheading. Then he searched all his drawers and pockets for money – which, in spite of the vaunted excellence of the paymaster's department, appeared to be somewhat scarce with the master-at-arms. Presently he announced himself as ready.

His decision took this shape:

"This is the excellentest fool's-errand in the world, and I the greater fool to go with another fool upon it. Lead on, Wat Gordon."

So, grumbling and muttering, he followed Wat down the stairs.

"And now," said Scarlett, "pray, have you so much as thought upon our need of horses?"

"Nay," said Wat, "I have thought of naught but getting out of prison, finding a friend, and winning back my lass."

"Aye, marry," grunted Scarlett, "thy lass! Mickle hast thou thought of taking thy fool comrade away from the best pay-roll and the most complaisant landlady he has found these thirty years."

CHAPTER XVIII
A PERILOUS MEETING

At the corner of the square, as they were turning under the shadow of the cathedral, a smallish, slender youth came running trippingly towards them.

"You want horses," he said to Wat; "there are three of them ready waiting over there in the dark of the trees beyond the canal yonder."

"And who are you, my skip-jack manling," said Scarlett, "that makes so free with your horses in this country of donkeys?"

"A friend!" said the boy, sliding away from the rasp in the voice of the master-at-arms.

Something familiar in gait and manner struck Wat through the disguise of the unfamiliar dress.

"It is the Little Marie!" he said, gladly enough. "What do you here in this attire?"

The slim figure had slipped round to Wat's side and now laid a soft, small hand on his.

"I have come to help you to escape. I have three horses waiting for you, and I have discovered that the password for the night is 'Guelderland.'"

"And the horses," queried Wat, "whence came they?"

"Ne'er inquire too carefully so that they be good ones," quoth Scarlett the campaigner.

"I took the loan of them from the stables of the Inn of the Coronation. I know of one who will see them safe home," said Marie.

"Is their hire paid for?" asked Wat the Scot.

"Faith, aye," said Jack Scarlett; "I myself have paid the fat old villain Sheffell for them over and over again. Let us go on. It skills not to be too nice in distinctions when one argues under the shadow of the gallows. The rascal shall have his horses back safe enough when we are done with them."

They went by unfrequented ways, following their slim, alert guide down by-ways that echoed under their feet, by quiet, evil-smelling streets vocal with night-raking cats, past innumerable prowling dogs with their backs chronically arched at the shoulders, half in general defiance of their kind, and half with bending over baskets of domestic rubbish.

They came after a while to the shade of the little wood beyond the great canal; and there, sure enough, tied to the green-sparred wooden box, which in Dutch fashion had been put round some of the trees of rarer sort, were three horses, all busily employed trying to crop the herbage to the limit of their several tethers.

"And the third?" queried Scarlett, looking at them. "Whose leg goes across the saddle of the third?"

"I come with you," said Marie, hastily and anxiously; "believe me, I can guide you to a little haven where are ships wherein you may reach your own land – or, at least, if it please you, escape safely out of this country of enemies."

"And who may you be, my pretty little young man with the babe's face, and where gat you the spirit that makes you speak so brisk and bold?"

Marie looked at Wat through the dim light as though to beseech him to answer for her.

Said Wat, overcoming a natural touch of shyness and reluctance, "This is the friend of mine who got me out of prison, and who was kind to me beyond all thanks when I abode therein. She is only 'the Little Marie,' whom you remember at the Hostel of the Coronation. After that night she went back there no more."

"She!" cried Scarlett; "she, did he say? 'Only the Little Marie,' quotha! Well, that is a good deal for a Scot of the Covenant, one that for lack of other helpers will have to company with the Hill-wanderers, so far as I can see, when he goes back to his own land."

"Aye," said Wat, dryly, "but we are not back yet."

"I kenned," returned Scarlett, every whit as dryly, "that we were on one love-quest. But had I kenned that we were on two of them at once, the devil a foot would I have stirred out of my good lodgings, or away from the bield of that excellent and truly buxom householder, the Frau Axel."

So far they had spoken in Scots, but the Little Marie, listening with tremulous eagerness to the tone of their conversation, laid her hand wistfully on Scarlett's arm.

"Fear not," she said in French, "I will never be a burden to you, nor yet troublesome. I am to stay with you only till you are clear of your difficulties. I can help you even as I helped him, for I know whither the maiden you seek has been taken. And when you are on the track of the robbers, then, so quickly as may be, the Little Marie will return to her own place."

Scarlett did not give back a single word of good or bad. As his manner was, he only grunted abruptly – yet, as it had been, not ill-pleased.

"Time we were in the saddle, at all events," he said; "that is, if we are to pass the posts ere the coming of the day."

Presently, therefore, the three found themselves riding towards the city gate. Scarlett rode first to show his uniform – that of the new corps of which he was master-at-arms. He wore also the ribbon of the order he had received from the prince conspicuously displayed, if it so happened that the watch should shed the light of a lantern upon them.

"Halt!" duly cried the sentinel at the port of the camp. "Who goes there?"

"The nephew of the colonel, my Lord Buchan," said Scarlett, "going to the camp under escort and accompanied by his tutor."

"Advance and give the password," said the sentry, mechanically.

"Guelderland!" said Scarlett, as carelessly as though he had been passing posts all night and was tired of the formula.

The sentry, dreaming of a maid with plates of gold at her temples, among the far-away canals of Friesland, fell back and permitted the three horsemen to pass without so much as wasting a glance upon them. The gates closed behind and the white tents glimmered vaguely in front of them. They turned aside, however, from the camp, keeping cautiously along to the right as they rode, in order to skirt the wall of the city. In this way they hoped to reach the open country without being again accosted; for it was entirely within the range of possibility that the password which had served them so well inside the city might be worse than useless without the walls of Amersfort.

Nevertheless, they passed the last of the white tents without challenge.

As soon as the camp was left behind Marie came to the front, and, without apology or explanation, led the way, diving into darkling roads and striking across fields by unseen bridle-paths without the least hesitation.

Meanwhile Wat and Scarlett, riding close behind her, talked over their plans. Kate (they decided) was in the power of Barra. She had been carried off against her will. So much they were sure of. Barra, however, was clearly not with her, having been wounded at the moment of his setting out by the knife of the Little Marie. Therefore, for the time being at least, Kate was saved the greater dangers of his presence. Also, his men would certainly keep her safe enough. The only question was in what direction Kate had been carried off.

"I can help you with that also," said the girl, to whom their quest had been explained, letting her horse drop back beside Wat's, "for yester-even there came a certain well-refreshed sailor-man of my village to the Street of the Prison. He served, he said, in a ship called the Sea Unicorn, and she waited only the signal of my Lord Barra to weigh her anchor. 'Goes my lord to Scotland?' I asked him. 'Nay,' he laughed, 'at least not directly and not alone. But he brings a fair wench for company to him, and that without asking her leave, as the Lords of Barra do all. Captain Smith is well paid for the venture, and to every man of us there is good white drink-money.' So after I heard that I was determined to set my knife deeper in my lord for the poor lass's sake, that she might never taste his tender mercies as I myself had done."

"And heard you whither the ship was to sail, Marie?" asked Wat, listening with great attention to her tale.

"Nay, my captain," she replied; "of that the man knew little, save where she was to put down her anchors and wait, which was off the town of Lis-op-Zee, to which presently we ride. But Captain Smith had sworn to go first to his home at Poole, whatever might be his freight. And the sailor believed that he would keep his word."

"That suits Jack Scarlett excellently," said his companion; "for to go on a quest after runaway maids to the kingdom of the blessed Louis the Great is of a certainty to have my neck stretched, on account of the somewhat hasty manner in which I relinquished the service of his Most Christian Majesty. And Scotland, though mine own land, has overly many waspish sectaries and rough-riding malignants for old Jack to be wholly comfortable therein."

"Then England and Poole it shall be," said Wat, confidently. "You shall see!"

"But have you considered, my friend, that England is a somewhat large mark to hit in the white and bring up in Poole Harbor at the first offer?" said Scarlett. "How shall one know that he is within a hundred miles or more of his aim?"

"Hearken," said Wat. "'Tis usually Jack Scarlett that is ready with plans, eager and fretful with encouragements. Upon his own adventures he fairly sweats alternatives, but on this occasion of mine he does naught but grumble. There is yet time for him to turn about and betake him to his greasy sheepfold. 'Guelderland' will even yet admit him in time for the morning muster of the fleecy ones."

Scarlett laughed good-naturedly, like one who will not take offence even when offence is meant.

"I am not in love, you see," he said. "It is love that is fertile of stratagems. I am but an old, wizened apple-jack. But so was it not ever. The days have been – ah, lad, the days have been! – when Jack Scarlett did not ride hot-foot after another man's lass."

"Hear my idea," said Wat, paying little heed to him. "We may hit or miss, it is true, but in any case the ship would be a small one, and most likely she would run for the nearest point of safety. Yet not directly across, for all the narrow seas are patrolled by the English vessels, because deadly jealousy of the Dutch still rankles deep in the heart of the king for the defeats he had of them in the days when he was Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, and attended to his mistresses' lapdogs instead of his duty."

Scarlett moved uneasily. There was, he knew, in most countries such a thing as a navy, but ships and rolling Jack Tars little concerned a soldier, save to transport him to his campaigning ground.

It was brightening to the morning as they came in sight of the high dunes of land that shut off the Northern Sea. Behind them, with the gables of its houses already threatened by the encroaching waves of sand, nestled the little village of Lis-op-Zee. A few fishing-boats were drawn up into a swallow's nest of a harbor, and beyond league on league stretched the desolate dunes, through which the river Lis felt its tortuous way among the sand-hollows to the wider levels of the sea.

Wat and Scarlett, with their attendant, were about to ride directly and without challenge through the street of the village towards the harbor, when a man came staggering out of a narrow entry betwixt two of the taller houses, so suddenly that the horse of the Little Marie almost knocked him down.

It was already the gray light of dawn, and the man, who was clad in swash-buckler array of side-breeches and broad hat, with many swords and pistols a-dangle at his belt, set his hand on his breast tragically and cried, "I thank the saints of the blessed Protestant religion that I have escaped this danger. For if I had been run over by that thing upon the horse there, before the Lord I should never have known what had struck me!"

"Get out of the way!" thundered Scarlett, savagely, for he was in no mood for miscellaneous fooling; "lie down under a bush, man, and learn to take thy liquor quietly."

The man turned instantly with a new swagger in his attitude and a straightening of his shoulders to a sort of tipsy attention. "And who, Sir Broad-Stripe, made you burgomeister of the town of Lis-op-Zee? Or may you by chance be his highness the prince in person, or his high councillor my Lord Barra, that you would drive good, honest gentlemen before you like cattle on the streets of this town?"

"Out, fellow!" shouted Scarlett, furiously, drawing his sword; "leave me to settle with him," he added, over his shoulder. Wat and Marie rode by at the side, but the man still stood and barred Scarlett's path.

Now Jack Scarlett was not exactly, as we have reason to know, a man patient to a fault. So on this occasion he spurred his horse straight at his opponent and spread him instantly abroad in the dust, sprawling flat upon his back on the highway.

"Help! Hallo, Barra's men! Here is a comrade ill-beset!" cried the rascal, without, however, attempting to rise.

And out of the houses on either side there came running a little cloud of men, all armed with swords and pistols hastily snatched, and with their garments in various stages of disarray.

Wat gave one look behind and then turned to his companion, holding his head down the while that the pursuers might not recognize him.

"Come on, thou fool, Scarlett," he cried, "we have started Barra's whole nest of wasps – there come Haxo and the rest. God help us if they have seen us!"

Scarlett turned also. But it was too late – the mischief was done.

"Stop them!" came the thunderous bellow of Haxo the Bull. "These are the fellows who outflouted and overbore us at the Inn of the Coronation."

So without waiting to parley, Wat and Scarlett, with the Little Marie well abreast of them, set spurs to their horses and rode as hard as they could gallop through the fringing woods of Lis and the sweet and flowery May glades out upon the desolate sand-hills of Noorwyk, hoping to hit upon some dell or cleft among these vast waves of sand, where they might keep themselves safe till their enemies should tire of the search and return to the city.