Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Lochinvar: A Novel

CHAPTER X
THE DESCENT OF AVERNUS

Wat staggered a little as he walked down the street of Zaandpoort. He felt somewhat like a bullock that has been felled, yet which for the moment escapes with life. The air had grown suddenly thin and cold, as it had been difficult to breathe. He drew his cloak about him and shivered.

"Well," he raged, "that at least is ended! They have done with me – made their choice. I that stood by them in many bad, old days am cast off for a rogue and a scoundrel – because, forsooth, he is an earl and a prince's councillor. Were I but come to my rights, they would not treat me thus! But, because I am only poor Wat Gordon of the Douglas Regiment, I must be grateful for any dog's treatment."

As Wat grew to believe his own silly windy words, he held his head a little higher. And into the poor, angry, foolish boy's heart the devil cast his baited hook. Pride took hold of Wat, and the thought of revenge.

"But, after all, am I not Walter Gordon of Lochinvar," he said, as he strode along, heeding none, "a gentleman at least, and now, in spite of them all, an officer also? If mine own folk and kin think nothing of me in the little lodgings of Zaandpoort Street, I can show them that there are places more famous, where others will make Wat Gordon welcome for his own sake."

At that moment a shouting reveller ruffling it along the street recalled to his mind that he was in the neighborhood of the famous Hostelry of the Coronation, where nightly during the stay of the army at Amersfort all the young bloods of the allied forces met, and where (it was reported) brightest eyes shone across the wine goblet, and daintiest feet danced upon the polished floors. The Inn of the Coronation was held by mine host Sheffell. A score of times it had been closed by the city fathers, but, nevertheless, always with more or less carefully concealed intent of winking hard at its immediate reopening.

And all this was because the burgomeister and magnates of Amersfort looked upon the Inn of the Coronation as a safety-valve for the riotous blades of the city and camp.

"For," said the former to the more sapient of his corporation when he could be private with them, "if the young kerls go not to the Coronation and meet with their like – well, we are men and fathers. Like is it that we may have matters on our hands that shall trouble us more deeply. Worse were it if the rascals came rattling their spurs and tagging at the tails of our daughters and our wives."

So the sleep of mine host Sheffell, of the Hostel of the Coronation, was not disturbed by the fear of the city council.

Towards this famous (or, as it might be, infamous) house, therefore, Wat turned his steps. Often the men of his regiment had offered to conduct him thither, but till now Wat had steadfastly refused, with the laugh which meant that he had to do with metal more attractive. For in a camp it does not do to obtain a repute for a too ostentatious virtue.

But to-night Wat Gordon buckled his sword a little tighter, belted his silken orange sash closer about his new officer's coat, swung his cloak back in a more becoming fashion, twirled his mustache, passed his fingers lightly through his crisp, fair curls, and strode with jingle of huge cavalry spurs into the Hostel of the Coronation, through whose portals (safe it is to say) no more proper or desirable young man had passed that night.

Great Sheffell himself was on the watch, and greeted the young officer with profoundest courtesy. Wat vouchsafed him hardly a nod, but marched straight into a great crowded room, which hummed about him, riant with gay noise and the spangle of silver and glass.

The main guest-chamber of the Coronation was a long, fairly wide, white-panelled room, divided at the sides into more private compartments by curtains hung upon rows of pillars. The more favored guests sat at small tables in the alcoves, and were waited on by girls attired in scarlet blouse and short embroidered silk kirtle, whose dainty hose of orange and black twinkled underneath as they passed deftly to and fro with glass and platter.

As soon as Wat entered, and began to thread his way through the laughing press, he found himself greeted from this table and that, and many were the invitations showered upon him to make one of some jocund company. But Wat only shook his head smilingly, and made his way steadily to the head of the room as if he had some appointment to keep there.

Nevertheless, he sat down listlessly enough at an unoccupied table, and a pretty maid, in a dress daintier and fresher than that of the other attendants, instantly stood beside him with her hands clasped modestly before her.

"I wait my lord's commands," she said, in excellent French.

Without giving the matter any consideration, Wat ordered a bottle of old Rhenish, and sat back to contemplate the scene at his ease. Officers of every regiment in the services of the States-General and of its allies were there, young attachés of the embassies, stray princelings of the allied German duchies; while scattered among these were to be seen a parti-colored crowd of ladies with flower-decked hair, lavish of shoulder, opulent of charm.

Presently the pretty maid brought Wat his bottle of Rhenish, ancient and cobwebbed. She decanted it carefully, standing close by his shoulder, so that a subtle suggestion of feminine proximity affected the young man strangely. She poured out a full measure of the scented vintage into a huge green glass on which tritons gambolled and sea-nymphs writhed.

"You have, perchance, no one to drink with you?" she said, giving him a glance out of her large and lustrous eyes.

"Truly," replied Wat, "I am alone!"

And the sadness of his life seemed to culminate in a kind of mimic and desperate isolation as he spoke.

"Then," said the girl, "may I not drink first to your beautiful eyes, my captain, and then, if you will, to our better acquaintance?"

She lifted the glass to her lips, tasted it as a bird does, and presented it to Walter with the daintiest gesture.

"Your name?" he said, looking at her with a certain tolerant and almost passive interest.

"I am called 'the Little Marie!'" she smiled; "I have been wellnigh a week in the Hostel of the Coronation, and not yet have I seen any to compare with you, my lord captain of the fair locks."

With a certain childish abandon, and a freedom still more than half innocent, Marie seated herself upon the arm of the great chair into which Wat had thrown himself upon his entrance. Her dainty foot dangled over the carven finial, almost touching the ribbons at Walter's knee with its silver buckled slipper of the mode of Paris. Marie's hand rested lightly on the small curls at the back of his neck, till Walter grew vaguely restive under the caressing fingers. Yet because he was in a great and thronged room humming with company, where none took any notice of him or his companion, each being intent on playing out his own game, the uneasy feeling soon passed away.

Only now and again, as the Rhenish sank in the bottle and the hand of the Little Marie took wider sweeps and paused more caressingly among his blonde hair, a thought awoke not unpleasantly in Wat's bosom.

"They have cast me out of their home and friendship. They have preferred a traitor. But I will let them see that there is pleasure in the world yet."

And his arm went of its own accord about the waist of the Little Marie.

* * * * *

It seemed to be but a moment after (though it might have been an hour) that Wat looked up. A hush had fallen suddenly upon the briskly stirring din of the Hostel of the Coronation. Walter's eyes instantly caught those of a man attired in the uniform of the provost-marshal of the city. There was a cold smile of triumph on the face which met his. It was Barra, and he touched with his arm the man who stood beside him. Wat turned a little to look past the curtain which partly surrounded his table and alcove, and there, over the wide gauzy sleeves of the Little Marie, he encountered the grave and reproachful regard of his cousin, William Gordon of Earlstoun.

Wat started to his feet with a half-formed idea of going forward to explain something, he knew not what. But ere he had disengaged himself from the great chair, on the arm of which perched the Little Marie, an angry thought, born of pride and fostered by the heady antiquity of the cobwebbed Rhenish, drew him back again into his place. A kind of desperate defiance chilled him into a blank and sudden calmness, which boded no good either to himself or to any who should oppose him. Besides which, the circumstances were certainly difficult of explanation.

"They cast me out, and then immediately they follow after to spy upon me. Shall I utter a word of excuse only to be met with the sneer of unbelief? Am I not an officer of dragoons? Also, am I not of age, and able to choose my company as well as they? As Wat Gordon never was a prayer-monger, so neither will he now be a hypocrite."

He glanced not uncomplaisantly at the Little Marie, who hummed a careless tune and swung her pretty foot against his knee, happily unconscious of his trouble. Perhaps the Rhenish had taken her back again to the green slopes about her native village, and to her more innocent childhood.

"Another bottle of wine," he cried, with a heady kind of half-boyish defiance.

"But you have not yet finished this," she answered. "Nor, indeed," she added, with a roguish smile, "even paid for it."

Wat threw a pair of gold pieces on the table.

"One for the wine and one to buy you a new pair of buckled shoes, Little Marie," he said.

"Then for luck you must drink out of the one I wear," she said, and forthwith she poured a thimbleful of the wine into the shoe, which she deftly slipped from the foot which had swung by his ribbon-knot of blue-and-white.

"Pledge me!" she cried, daring him to a match of folly, and she held the curious beaker close to his chin. Wat was conscious that his cousin stood grave and stern by the door, and that on Barra's face there hovered a strangely satisfied smile. But something angry and hot within him drove him recklessly deeper and deeper. He had no pleasure in the thing. It was as apples of Sodom in his mouth, exceeding bitter fruit; but at least he knew that he was cutting every tie that bound him to the street of Zaandpoort – to those who had despised and rejected him.

He lifted the shoe of the Little Marie in the air.

"To the owner of the prettiest foot in the world!" he cried, and pledged her.

Four men who had come in after my Lord of Barra now sat themselves down at the table nearest to Wat. The Little Marie, having recovered her slipper and wiped it coquettishly with the tassels of Wat's sash, somewhat reluctantly went away to bring the second bottle of Rhenish.

During her absence Lochinvar remained behind, blowing with all his might upon the dying coals of his anger, and telling himself that he had done nothing worthy of reproach, when suddenly John Scarlett plumped himself down into the chair opposite him. He had been in the inn all the time, but only now he had come near Walter Gordon.

"Lochinvar," he said, "'tis a sight for sore eyes to see you here! What has happened to the Covenant that you have left the prayer-meeting and come to the Hostel of the Coronation?"

"Jack," cried Wat, "you know me better than that. Never was Walter Gordon a great lover of the Covenant all the days of his life."

"You ran gayly enough with the hare, then, at any rate!" answered John Scarlett, provokingly.

"Nay," replied Wat, "I was hunted by the pack, it is true, but that was because of the dead stroke I gave His Grace the Duke of Wellwood."

"And the beginning of that – was it not some matter of doctrine or of the kirk?" asked Scarlett, though he knew the truth well enough.

The Rhenish had been mounting to Wat's head, and his heart had grown gay and boastful.

"Nay," he cried; "very far indeed from that. 'Twas rather a matter of the favors of my lady the Duchess."

One of the men at the next table looked quickly over at Wat's words, and, indeed there seemed to be but little talk among them. Contrariwise, they sat silently drinking their wine, and as it had been, listening to the talk of Wat Gordon and his companion.

Presently the Little Marie came daintying and smiling back with the wine, deftly weaving her way among the revellers, and as she went by the neighboring table one of the men at the side on which she tried to pass made free to set his arm about her.

"Change about, my lass," he said; "'tis the turn of this table to have your pretty company. By my faith, they have given us a maid as plain-visaged as a Gouda cheese."

The Little Marie gave a quick cry, and Wat half started to his feet and laid his hand upon his sword; but Scarlett dropped a heavy palm upon his shoulder and forced him back again into his seat. In a moment the girl had adroitly twisted herself from the clutch of the man, and, in addition, had left the marks of her nails on his cheek.

"Take that, my rascal," she cried, "and learn that spies have no dealings with honest maids."

"Good spirit, i' faith!" said Scarlett, nodding his head approvingly; but the Little Marie, coming to them with heightened color and angry eyes, did not again set herself on the arm of Wat Gordon's chair. Instead she drew a high stool to the side of the table, midway between Wat and Scarlett. Then she placed her arm upon the table-cloth, and leaned her chin upon the palms of her hands.

"Abide by us," said Walter, who could not bear that so fair and light a thing should be left to the ill-guided mercies of such a mangy pack as were drinking at the next table.

The second supply of Rhenish, with the capable assistance of Scarlett, sank apace in its tall flask, and at each glass Wat's voice mounted higher and higher. He could be heard all over the room declaiming upon the merits of Scottish men, offering to defend with his life the virtue and beauty of Scottish maids, or in case none should be willing to call these in question, then he was equally ready to draw sword on behalf of the dignity and incorruptibility of Scottish judges.

The guest-room of the Coronation was for a while disposed to listen with amused wonder. Presently the four men at the table near Wat became five. The new-comer proved to be a short-necked, red-faced, deeply-scarred man, dressed in the uniform of the provost-marshal's guards. The wine in Wat's brain prevented him for the time from recognizing his ancient enemy, Haxo the Bull; but Haxo the Bull nevertheless it was.

Scarlett was now most anxious to get Wat away in safety. There was also a gleam of almost piteous appeal in the eyes of the Little Marie.

"My captain," she said, bending over and laying her hand on his sleeve, "it is high time for you to go to your quarters; you can come and see me again in the morning if you will."

For Wat was now talking louder than ever, and beating for emphasis upon the table with his hand.

"And I repeat that whoever casts a slur upon the virtue and beauty of a Scots maid has to settle accounts with Wat Gordon of Lochinvar – "

The men at the nearest table had also begun talking loudly, and the voice of Haxo pierced the din.

"I tell you the girl is safely my master's meat, and she is a dainty filly enough. Her name is Kate McGhie, and she is a land-owner's daughter somewhere in the barren land of Scots. My lord bought her good-will quickly enough with a gay present for herself and a commission for her gossip's loutish husband – trust Barra for that. He is never laggard in his affairs with women."

Wat Gordon was on his feet in an instant. The Little Marie instinctively shrank aside from the white fierce face which she encountered. It looked like the countenance of some one whom she had never seen. The young man fairly spurned the table at which he had been sitting, and with a single spring he was over the next and at the breast of Haxo the Bull.

"Villain, you lie in your throat," he shouted, "and I will kill you for your lie! 'Tis false as the lying tongue which I will presently tear out of your foul mouth!"

The four men rose simultaneously and drew, some of them their swords and the others their daggers. Wat would instantly have been stabbed among them but that the Little Marie, dashing forward like a hawk, threw her arms about the nearest of his foes, for a minute pinioning his hands to his side.

Then Scarlett, with a sweep of his sword, leaped on the table in the midst of them, crying "Fair play! Stand back there, all of you who do not want to be spitted!"

Presently, finding Wat's grasp relax on his throat as he reached for his weapon, Haxo shook himself free and drew the hanger which, in honor of his advancement, he wore instead of his butcher's knife. Wat had neither room nor yet time to draw his long sword; but with quick baresark fury he caught up by the leg the heavy oaken chair on which Haxo had been sitting, and twirling it over his head like a staff, he struck the brawny butcher with the carved back of it fair on the temple, almost crushing in his cheek. The Bull dropped to the floor without a groan.

Then there ensued a battle fierce and fell in that upper corner of the great room of the Coronation. There Wat stood at bay with the oaken chair in his hand, while Scarlett's long sword turned every way, and even the Little Marie, long unaccustomed to courtesy, showed her fidelity to the salt of kindness she had tasted. She crouched low behind the fighters, almost on her knees, and waited for a chance to strike upward with the dagger she held in her hand. But the long room swarmed black with their foes. The remaining four had already been reinforced by half a dozen others, and the way to the door seemed completely blocked. Then it was that Scarlett raised the rallying cry, "Scots to me! Hither to me, blue bonnets all!"

And through the press were thrust the burly shoulders of Sergeant Davie Dunbar and two of his comrades. All might now have gone differently but for the madness working in the brain of Wat of Lochinvar. For the insult to his sweetheart's good name, uttered by Haxo, had made him resolve to kill every man at the table who had heard the blasphemous slander.

"Arrest him!" the provost-marshal's men cried. "He has murdered Haxo!"

"Die, rogues and liars all!" shouted Wat, rushing at them in yet fiercer wrath.

And without further parley he brought his chair down upon the shoulder of the nearest, who sank on his face stunned with the mighty blow.

"Good Scots to the rescue!" cried Scarlett, as was his custom engaging two men at a time with his point and easily keeping them in play.

So in this fashion, Wat leading and striking all down in his way with a kind of desperate fury, Scarlett and Davie Dunbar, with the other two Scots, pressing as closely after him as they could, the small compact band made its way steadily and slowly towards the outgate of the Hostel of the Coronation.

"Lord help us all!" cried the more terrified of their opponents; "let us get out of the way of these praying blue bonnets when they are angered."

For the floor began to be sprinkled with groaning men who had dropped from the blades of the outlanders, and with stunned and maimed men stricken down by the fierce vigor of Wat's barbaric onslaught.

Yet, in spite of all, it was a long time before the steadfast five could force their way to the street.

By this time Wat held his chair by its only surviving leg, and the blades of the small Scots phalanx dripped blood into their own basket hilts. The street without was packed with townspeople, and even the watch could not make way to apprehend them. When the Scots finally came forth into the night it might, indeed, have gone very ill with them had it not been that a patrol of Frisian horse chanced to pass at that moment in front of the Hostel of the Coronation.

To them Scarlett cried out in their own country speech (with which he was somewhat acquainted), "Help, there, for certain true soldiers of the prince cruelly beset by townsfolk!"

Now this was the very wisest word he could have spoken. For whatever private discontents they might cherish, all the soldiers of the camp were of the faction of their general when it came to choosing between the Prince of Orange and the turbulent and rebellious municipality of Amersfort. The patrol swiftly opened out, and presently enclosed the five Scots between their files. Thus they were able to pass safely through the howling mob, which, however, made ugly rushes at them as they went.

Presently they came to the headquarters of the portion of the force domiciled in the city.

Wat, who for a time had been entirely sobered by the fierce excitement of battle, now again felt his head reel with the sudden, sharp chill of the night air.

Yet when the prisoners were confronted with the officer of the night, he at once stepped forward and, without hesitation, assumed the sole responsibility for the affair.

"I fear I have slain a man – or, mayhap, more than one," he said; "but these, my friends, have had no part in the quarrel. They but assisted me to fight my way out."

"Your name and regiment, sir?" said the officer in charge, civilly enough.

"I am Walter Gordon, captain in Douglas's regiment of Dragoons," replied Walter, readily enough.

"Let Captain Gordon be taken to the military prison and there kept in the safest cell," interrupted the clear, high voice of Barra. He had entered unobserved, having followed the patrol along the street. The officer of the night saluted the high councillor of the prince and present provost-marshal of the camp and city of Amersfort.

Walter was therefore promptly delivered to the officer and file who had been sent to escort him, and in a moment he went out with them into the night.

"Were they souljers or civilians ye murthered, for sure?" asked the officer, as they marched along the street. He spoke the pleasant tongue of Ireland in a soft, far-reaching whisper.

"Townsfolk," returned Wat; "all except one hulking scoundrel of a provost-marshal's man!"

"More power to ye," said the Irishman, promptly. "Give me the grip of your hand – and, by my sowl, I'll give ye a chance to run for it at the next corner."

But Wat declined the obliging offer of the good-hearted Irishman.

"I thank you with all my heart," he said. "It is kindly meant. But I prefer to stand my trial. Things can't be worse with me than they are!"

"Faith, it's you that knows, my son," said the Irishman; "but to Patrick Ryan's thinking a long hempen necktie, swung elegantly over a beam, might make things a deal worse for ye!"

And in a minute more the iron gate of the military prison of Amersfort had shut-to upon Wat Gordon.