CHAPTER XXXVII
THE ISLE OF BLISS
Under the double shelter of the great cliffs of Lianacraig and the lower but more effectual barrier of the ridge which runs across the little island of Fiara in the direction of its greatest length, Wat and his love abode for a season in great peace. Scarlett accepted the situation with the trained alacrity of a soldier of fortune. He built camp-fires of the drift-wood of the shore, allowing the smoke to dissipate itself along the walls of the cliffs upon dark nights, and using only charred and smokeless wood on the smaller cooking-fires of the day.
He also took Wise Jan under his sway and rigid governance, so that, very much to his own surprise, that youth found himself continually running here and there at the word of command, as unquestioningly as if he had been a recruit of a newly formed regiment under the drastic treatment of the famous master-at-arms.
At first Kate felt the strangeness of being left upon a lonely island with none of her own sex to speak to or give her countenance. But she was a girl of many experiences in a world which was then specially hard and cruel to lonely women.
While yet a child she had seen houses invaded by rude soldiery. She had fled from conventicle with the clatter of hoofs and the call of trumpet telling of the deadly pursuit behind her. Even the manner of her capture and her confinement on this distant isle told a plain tale of suffering endured and experience gained. Hers had been, largely by her own choice, no sheltered life passed in the bieldy howe of common things. She had met sorrow and difficulty before, face to face, eye to eye, and was ready so to encounter them again.
But to be on the island of Fiara in daily contact with her lover, to gain momentarily in knowledge of her own affection, to feel the bonds which bound her to this one man continually strengthen, were some of the new experiences of these halcyon days.
Wat and Kate walked much under the shelter of that wall of rocks which stood a hundred yards back from the sandy northern shore of the island. Here they were screened from observation in every direction save towards the north, and that way the sea was clear to the Pole. Blue and lonely it spread before them, the waves coming glittering and balancing in from the regions of ice and mist, as sunnily and invitingly as though they had been the billows of the Pacific arching themselves in thunder upon a strand of coral.
Here the two walked at morn and even, discussing, among other things, their loves, their former happenings, the strange ways of Providence: most of all their future, which, indeed, looked dark enough at the present, but which, nevertheless, shone for them with a rosy glow of hope and youth. There are no aspirants more sure of success than the young who, strong in the permanence of mutual affection, take hands and look towards the rising sun. All happens to those who know how to wait, especially if they have the necessary time before them. If they be young, the multitude of the coming years beckons them onward, and so their hearts be true and worthy, the very stars in their courses will fight for them. The hatreds and prejudices which oppose them lose their edge; their opponents, being of those that go down the slope to the dark archway of death, pass away within and are seen no more. But the young true-lovers remain. And lo! in a moment there is nothing before them but the plain way to walk in – the sweetness of a morning still young, a morning without clouds, the sweeter for the night and the long and weary way they have come together, hand in loving hand.
"Kate," said Wat, "tell me when you first knew that you loved me."
They were walking on the sand, across which the evening shadows were beginning to lengthen over the intricate maze of ripple-marks, and when each whorled worm-casting was gathering a little pool of blue shadow on its eastern side.
The girl clasped her hands behind her back and gazed abstractedly away to the sunsetting, her shapely head turned a little aside as though she were listening to the voice of her own heart and hearing its answer too keenly to dare give it vent in words.
"I think," said she, at last, very slowly – "I think I began to love you on the night when I saw you first, after I had come across the seas to Holland."
"What!" cried Lochinvar, astonished at her answer; "but then you were more hard and cruel to me than ever – would not even hear me speak, and sent me away unsatisfied and most unhappy."
Kate gave Wat a glance which said for a sufficient answer, had he possessed the wit to read it: "I was a woman, and so afraid of my own heart – you a man, and therefore could not help revealing yours."
"It was then," she answered, aloud, "that I first felt in my own breast the danger of loving you. That made me afraid – yes, much afraid."
"And why were you afraid, dear love?" Wat questioned, softly.
"Because in love a woman has to think for herself, and for him who loves her, also. She sees further on. Difficulties loom larger to her. They close in upon her soul and fright her. Then, also, she has to watch within, lest – lest – "
Here the girl stopped and gazed away pensively to the north. She did not finish her sentence.
"Lest what, Kate?" urged Wat, softly, eager for the ending of her confession, for the revelation of the maiden's heart was sweet to him.
"Lest her own heart betray her and open its gates to the enemy," she answered, very low.
She walked on more sharply for a space. She was still thinking, and Wat had the sense not to interrupt her meditation.
"Yet the chief matter of her thought," she went on, "the thought of the girl who is wooed and is in danger of loving, is only to keep the castle so long – and then, when she is sure that the right besieger blows the horn without the gate, she leaps up with joy to draw the bolts of the doors, to fling them wide open, to strike the flag that waves aloft. Then, right glad at heart, she runs to meet her lord in the gateway, with the keys of her life in her hands."
She turned herself suddenly about with a lovely expression of trust in her eyes, and impulsively held out both her own hands.
"Take them," she said, "my lord!"
And Wat Gordon took the girl's hands in his, and falling on his knee he kissed them very tenderly and reverently.
Then he rose, and keeping her left hand still in his right, they walked along silently for a time into the sunset, their eyes wet because of the sound of their hearts crying each to each, and the shining of love glowing richer than the rose of the west on their faces.
It was Wat who spoke first.
"Love," he said, "you will never change when the days darken? You will stand firm when you hear me spoken against, when you cannot thus hearken to my voice pleading with you, when there is none to speak well of me?"
"My lad, was it not then that I loved you most," she replied, very gently, "when men spoke evil things in my ears, and told me how that you were unworthy, unknightly, untrue? Was it not even then that my heart cried out louder than ever, 'I will believe my king before them all – before the hearing of my friend's ears, the seeing of my mother's eyes, before the sworn word on the tongue of my father?'"
"Ah, love," said Wat, "it is sweet, greatly sweet, to listen to the speaking of your heart."
And well might he say it, for it was, indeed, a lovely thing to hear the throb of faith run rippling through her voice like the sap of the spring through the quickening forest trees.
"But," he added, with quickly returning melancholy, "doubtless there are dark days before us, of which, however, we now know the worst. Will my Kate be sufficient for these things? We have heard what Barra says – bewitched by what cantrip I know not; but certain it seems that your father hath ta'en him a new wife, and she hath so worked on his spirit that he would now deliver you to our enemy over there, on the isle from which I took you. Suppose that all things went against us, Kate, and that I was never more than a wanderer and an outcast; suppose your father ordered, your friends compelled, your own heart told you tales of our love's hopelessness, or others carried to you evil things of me – would you be strong enough to keep faith, Kate, to hold my hand firmly as you do now, and having done all, still be able to stand?"
The girl looked at her lover a little sadly while he was speaking, as if he had, indeed, a far road to travel ere he could win to the inmost secret of a girl's heart.
"Wat Gordon," she said, "know you not that there is but one kind of love? There are not two. The love of the wanton that grasps and takes only is no love – but light-o'-love. The love that flinches back into shelter because the wind blows is not love; nor yet that which hides itself, afraid when the lift darkens or when the thunder broods and the bolt of heaven is hurled."
There came a kind of awful sweetness on his love's face as she stood looking up at him which made Wat Gordon tremble in his turn. By his doubts he had jangled the deepest chords of a heart. He stood in the presence of things mightier than he had dreamed of. Yet his fear was natural. He knew himself to be true as God is true. But then he had everything to gain – this woman who held his hand all things to lose, everything to endure.
Kate went on, for strong words were stirring in her heart, and the mystery of a mighty love brooded over the troubled waters of her soul like the mystery of the seven stars in God's right hand.
"But one kind of love," she said, in a low, hushed voice, which Wat had to incline his ear to catch. And there came also a crooning rhythm into her utterance, as if she were inspired and spake prophecies. "How says the Writing? 'Love suffereth long and is kind.' So at least the preachers expound it. There is no self in love. Self dies and is buried as soon as soul has looked into soul through the windows of the eyes, as soon as heart has throbbed against naked heart, and life been taken into life. Dead and buried is Self, and over his head the true-lovers set up a gravestone, with the inscription: 'Love seeketh not her own – is not easily provoked – thinketh no evil.'"
"Oh love," groaned Wat, "if I could but believe it! But all things are so grievously against me. I can only bid you wait, and after all there may be but an exile's fate to share with you, a barren, unfruitful lordship; while there are those, great and powerful, who could set the coronet on your brow."
The girl let his hand drop. She stood looking a long while to seaward. Then with sudden, quick resolve, she turned and faced him. She lifted her hands and laid them on his shoulders, keeping him at the full stretch of her arms so that she might look deep down into his heart.
"I am not angry with you, Wat," she said, softly and slowly, "though I might be. Why will you let me fight this battle alone? Why must I have faith for both of us? Surely in time you will understand and believe. Hear me, true lad," she put her hands a little farther over his shoulders and moved an inch nearer him; "you make me say things that shame me. But what can I do? I only tell you what I would be proud to tell all the world, if it stood about us now as it shall stand on the great Day of Judgment. I would rather drink the drop and bite the crust by the way-side with you, Wat Gordon; rather be an outcast woman among the godless gypsy-folk with you – aye, without either matron's ring to clasp my finger or maiden's snood to bind my hair – than be a king's wife and sit on a throne with princesses about me for my tire-women."
She had brought her face nearer to his as she spoke, white and drawn with her love and its expression. Now when she had finished she held him for a moment fixed with her eyes, as it were nailing the truth she had spoken to his very soul. Then swiftly changing her mood, she dropped her arms from his shoulders and moved away along the beach.
Wat hastened after her and walked beside her, watching her. He strove more than once to take her hand, but she kept it almost petulantly away from him. The tears were running down her cheeks silently and steadily. Her underlip was quivering. The girl who had been brave for two, now shook like a leaf. They came to the corner of the inland cliff of Fiara, which had gradually withdrawn itself farther and farther up the beach, as the tide-race swept more and more sand along the northern front of the inland. A rowan-tree grew out of a cleft. Its trunk projected some feet horizontally before it turned upward. Kate leaned against it and buried her face in her hands.
Wat stood close beside her, longing with all his nature to touch her, to comfort her; but something held him back. He felt within him that caressing was not her mood.
"Hearken, sweet love," he said, beseechingly, clasping his hands over each other in an agony of helpless desire; "I also have something to say to you."
"Oh, you should not have done it," she said, looking at him through her streaming tears; "you ought not to have let me say it. You should have believed without needing me to tell you. But now I have told you, I shall never be my own again; and some day you will think that I have been too fond, too sudden – "
"Kate," said Wat, all himself again at her words, and coming masterfully forward to take her by the wrists. He knelt on one knee before her, holding her in his turn, almost paining her by the intensity of his grasp. "Kate, you shall listen to me. You blame me wrongly; I have not indeed, to-day, told you of my faith, of my devotion, of the certainty of my standing firm through all the darkness that is to come. And I will tell you why."
"Yes," said the girl, a little breathlessly; "tell me why."
"Because," said Wat, looking straight at her, "you never doubted these things even once. You knew me better, aye, even when you flouted me, set me back, treated me as a child, even when others spoke to you of my lightness, told you of my sins and wrong-doings. I defy you, Kate McGhie," he continued, his voice rising – "I defy you to say that there ever was a moment when you honestly doubted my love, when you ever dreamed that I could love any but you – so much as an instant when the thought that I might forget or be false to you had a lodgment in your heart. Kate, I leave it to yourself to say."
This is the generous uncandor which touches good women to the heart. For Wat was not answering the real accusation she had brought against him – that he had not believed her, but had continued to doubt her in the face of her truest words and most speaking actions.
"Ah, Wat," she said, surrendering at once, "forgive me. It is true. I did not ever doubt you."
She smiled at him a moment through her tears.
"I knew all too well that you loved me – silly lad," she said; "I saw in your eyes what you thought before you ever told me – and even now I have to prompt you to sweet speeches, dear Sir Snail!"
At this encouragement Wat would gladly have drawn her closer to him, but the girl began to walk back towards their heather-grown shelter.
"Yet I care not," she said. "After all, 'tis a great thing to get one's follies over in youth. And you are my folly, lad – a grievous one, it is true, but nevertheless one that now I could ill do without. Nay," she went on, seeing him at this point ready to encroach, "not that to-night, Wat. All is said that needs to be said. Let us return."
And so they walked soberly and silently to the wide-halled chamber recessed in the ancient sea-cliff. Kate paused ere they entered, and held her face up with a world of sweet surrender in it for Wat to kiss at his will.
"Dear love," she said, softly, "I beseech you do not distrust me any more. By this and by this, know that I am all your own. Once you made me say it. Now of mine own will I do it."
She spoke the last words shyly; then swiftly, as one that takes great courage on the edge of flight:
"Bend down your ear, laddie," she said, and paused while one might count a score.
Wat listened keenly, afraid that his own heart should beat too loud for him to catch every precious word.
"I love you so that I would gladly die to give you perfect happiness even for a day," she whispered.
And she vanished within, without so much as bidding him good-night.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
MISFORTUNATE COLIN
The completeness of the peace and content which reigned on Fiara was only equalled by the fierceness of the storm of passion and hellish anger which broke over Suliscanna on the day after the chief's arrival. It was already late in the forenoon when a messenger, haggard and half blind with terror and the dying out of the drink in his brain, brought to the house of the chief the news of the destruction of the boats and the flight of the prisoners.
Barra rose to his feet. His hand instinctively groped for a dagger, and not finding it, he struck the man to the ground with his clinched fist. During the night he had probably been the only sober man on the island. When he went out he found a pale and terror-stricken population. Women peered anxiously at him from their hovels or scudded among the scattered bowlders on the hill, with children tagging wearily after them and clinging to their skirts.
As he came near the landing-place a woman skirled suddenly from the back of a rock. The wild voice startled him. It was like the crying of the death-keen.
"Who is that?" demanded Barra of his nearest henchman.
"'Tis the wife of the watchman, Misfortunate Colin," replied Alister McAlister, who this morning had somehow accomplished the gravity of a judge on circuit. He had been all night in attendance outside the chief's door – so that, although he had carried out his declared intentions to the letter, he was yet wholly guiltless of the damning negligence which the Lord of Barra was now about to investigate and punish.
Presently the Calf and the Killer were discovered, sleeping the sleep of the greatly intoxicated. They still lay with Wat's rope about them, clasped in fraternal arms, their breaths combining to make one generous steam of Hollands gin. Misfortunate Colin lay as he had fallen, with the keys of the dungeon tucked under his belt. The chief turned him over with his foot.
"Nail him up to that door by the hands and feet!" he ordered, briefly, looking at the man with cold, malevolent eyes.
A woman's shriek rang out, and like a mænad she came flying down the hill, loose-haired, wild-eyed, and flung herself down, grovelling bestially at Barra's feet.
"Mercy, master of life and death!" she cried, clasping him firmly by the knees; "all misfortunes fall on my man. And this is not his fault. All the island was even as he is."
"But all the island had not the charge of a prisoner," cried Barra.
Then without further question men approached to seize the man of fated fortunes, and he would doubtless have been immediately crucified on the door which he had failed to guard but for the interference of Mistress McAlister.
She came fearlessly forth from her adjacent dwelling, clad in her decent white cap and apron, looking snod and wiselike as if she had been going to the Kirk of Colmonel on a sacrament Sabbath. Even as Barra looked at her he was recalled to himself. To him she represented that civilization from which he had so recently come, and which looked askance on the wild vengeances that were expected and even thought proper among the clansmen of Suliscanna.
"My lord," she said, "there was one man lang syne that was crucified with nails for the sins of the people. Be kinder to poor Colin. Tie him up with ropes, lest his blood be on your head, and ye win not within the mercy of the Crucified."
Now though when abroad he made a pretence of religious fervor for political purposes, in reality Barra was purely pagan and cared nothing for Bess's parable. Nevertheless, he acknowledged tacitly the force of an outside civilization and another code of justice, speaking to him in the person of the woman from Ayrshire.
"Tie him up with ropes," he commanded, abruptly.
And so in a trice the Misfortunate Colin was secured to the door of the dungeon of which he had proved himself so inefficient a guard, his arms fixed by the wrists to the corners of it, and his heavy, drunken head rolling loosely from side to side upon his breast. His wife knelt at his feet, but without daring so much as to touch him with a finger. Round his neck swung the keys, the emblem of his broken trust. As for the Calf and the Killer, they were flung, bound as they were, into the dungeon, where upon awaking their seeming fraternal amity suddenly gave way, and they bit and butted at each other to the extent of their bonds with mutual recriminations and accusations of treachery.
Barra surveyed carefully every trace which had been left of the manner of the prisoners' escape. But for the present, at least, he could come to no conclusion, save that they had escaped in a boat, probably with the help of Wise Jan. He judged also that, thanks to this excellent navigator, the fugitives were by this time far beyond the reach of his present vengeance. Nevertheless he left nothing untried. He climbed the heights of Lianacraig and looked out seaward and northward. But he could see nothing upon the black ridge of the central cliffs of Fiara, and nothing in the gloomy strait which separated it from the opposite rock-wall of Suliscanna. All in that direction was warded by the race of the Suck, ridging dangerously on either side and tailing away to the north in a jabble of confused water.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, upon Fiara Wise Jan ran his errands and gathered his drift-wood under the orders of the master-at-arms, while Wat and Kate, content to dwell together in an innocent garden of Eden, a garden from which the serpent was for the moment excluded, walked hand in hand under the shelter of the long central cliff-line of the isle on which they had found shelter. The history of their love's growth was a constant marvel to them, and their chief interest and happiness now lay in unravelling the why and the wherefore of each incident in their pasts. How at such a time one thought this – how at such another they both thought the same identical thing – though one was interned in a Dutch prison and the other tossing on the waters of the North Sea. Now that they were fully assured as to their mutual loves – for even Wat had ceased to doubt, if not to marvel – they had time and to spare for the comparison of their feelings in the past, and for the most exhaustive examination of their possibilities in the future.
"Tell me a tale," commanded Kate, as they sat together on the projecting part of the trunk of the rowan-tree set in the angle of the cliff.
"Which tale?" asked Wat, promptly, as if there were only two in the world – as indeed there were, for them. Kate sighed at the impossibility of having both at once – the wondrous tale of their past, and the yet more wondrous and aureate tale of their future.
"Tell me how you first loved me, and when, and why, and how much?" she said, since perforce she had to choose one.
Then Wat, delving always further and further into the past, produced instance after instance to prove that ever since he had seen her, known her, hearkened to her voice, there had not been a moment when he had not loved her.
And Kate, resting the dusky tangle of her soft curls on his shoulder, sighed again and again with a nestling bliss to listen to tale so sweet.
"You have forgotten about what you thought coming up the stairs in Zaandpoort Street," she would correct. For she knew the track of the story-teller by heart, and like a child with a favorite fairy tale, she resented omissions almost as much as she suspected the genuineness of additions.
"Now tell me more about seeing me lying on Maisie's lap with hands clasped behind my head. And about what you thought then."
And so most innocently she would put her hands in the very position it was Wat's duty to describe, which naturally for some moments disturbed his ideas and interfered with the continuity of the history.
But as soon as they turned homeward they became, after their manner, severely practical.
"Kate," said Wat, as they walked together – Wat's hand mostly on his sweetheart's shoulder, after the manner of school-boys that are comrades – "'tis high time we were taking thought for our escape. Each day makes the coming of the ship to carry off Barra and his retinue a nearer possibility."
Kate sighed as she looked on the long barrier of the northern breakers whitening the horizon, and then at the mellow floods of peaceful light which poured in from the west, where the seabirds were circling and diving.
"And leave all this," she said, wistfully, "and you?"
"Nay, no need to leave me – if you will stay with me," quoth Wat, cheerfully; "but to come with me to mine own land, to be my love and my queen."
"And what would you do with me there?" she said, looking up at him. "Would not you be an outlaw, and I no better than an encumbrance while you remain in hiding?"
"I think not that the pursuit is so keen as it was before the king began to protect those of his own religion," answered Wat. "I believe we should find that the worst of the shower had slacked. And then there is always the old tower in the middle of the loch. Since my mother's death no one has dwelt in it. We would be sure of a shelter there."
Kate shook her head wistfully, like one with the same desires but better knowledge.
"Wat, my dear," she made him answer, "you speak by the heart, and it is my heart also, God knows; but now I must speak a word or two by the head. You and I must e'en bide a wee and wait. It is better so. I will not be a charge on you. If I am not welcome at home, why, there is always sweet Grizel McCulloch at the Ardwell to whom I can go. She will gladly give me a hiding-place and a bite for company's sake till the blast goes by. If all speak the truth in Holland where we come from, it will not be long ere the king has filled up the measure of his folly."
"In that case I might have to fight for the fool and his folly both," said Wat, quietly.
"Aye, there it is!" cried Kate; "a lass in her heart cares nought for king or prince when once she has given herself to love. But a man will hold to his own way of it, and put in peril his happiness and the happiness of another in order to have the right shade of color set upon the cushions of the throne."
Wat smiled at her yet more gently.
"In Holland," he said, "I fought for the prince and was true to him; but it is another matter here, where we are under the rule and sway of the anointed king of the ancient Scottish name."
"Ah, well, Wat," said Kate, "that is not my thought of it, as well you know. But I do not love you so little, lad, that I could think the less of you for standing by your colors, even though with your own eyes ye have seen that king make of Scotland little better than a hunting-field."
"James Stuart is my king as surely as Kate McGhie is my love," said Wat, mighty gravely. "I argue as little about one as the other."
Kate touched his arm gently.
"Dear love – no," she said. "Do not let us dispute any more. You are you, and so you love me true. You shall fight for what king you will, only keep safe your heart and life for me – for they are all I have."
They had reached the great chamber in the cliff which lay open to the north, and in which Jack Scarlett already had his cooking-fire of charcoal alight for the evening meal. A hundred yards from the entrance there met them a sweet and appetizing smell of fresh sea-fish broiling in the ashes. For Wise Jan lay most of his spare time fishing out on a jutting rock, where the swirl of the Suck sent a back-spang of current careering anglewise along the northern edge of the Fiara.
"Jack," said Wat, as they came in, "I think that we should get away from the island as soon as we can."
"And has it taken you all this time to come to that conclusion?" cried old Jack, without looking up, plowtering discontentedly in the red embers with a burned stick.
"The new moon will now give us nearly three hours' light – enough for our purpose," said Wat, "and Wise Jan here can help us to put our old boat in readiness."
"Why not the new and brave one you hid in the water-passage? I suppose it is there in safety still?" said Scarlett.
"Aye," replied Wat, "but unless you want to be cast away the second time in the tumble of the Suck, you will most carefully leave that boat alone; for the current races by at either end, and except for those who have spent their lives in piloting their way through the intricate passages of the reefs and know their every glide and swirl, it is impossible to reach the open sea from the Sound of Suliscanna."
"How then?" grumbled Scarlett, for these things of the sea were not in his province, and he resented the reference of any question to him. "Let those that stomach cold salt-water agree about the road over it. My parish begins when there is solid earth beneath my feet."
Wat answered him clearly, scoring the points on his fingers as he made them.
"First we have the old boat, which on my first coming hither I found floating in the northern bay and brought ashore. Well, we must get Jan to rig her with the mast out of the larger boat in the water-cave, and equip her with the oars out of that also. Then, since the Suck sweeps past us on the east, and there is a strong tide-race to the west, we must steer our way directly out from the northern shore of Fiara, which is indeed the only direction in which the sea is anyway clear. We shall keep steadily on till we find the waters to the east calm and practicable, for the fretting of the tide on the shoreward skerries cannot last long out on the open sea."
Scarlett nodded his head. It was all right, he thought. He was ready to adventure in any direction which did not involve another wrestle with the unfriendly and unwholesome Suck of Suliscanna.
"This very night," quoth Wat, to close the discussion, "will I swim over and bring back the needful things for our departure in the boat itself. It is a pity, indeed, that we cannot take her with us."