CHAPTER XI
THE HEARTS OF WOMEN
Barra and Will Gordon returned together to the lodgings in the street of Zaandpoort. There was a sinister look of inexpressible triumph on the dark face of my Lord of Barra. When they reached home Will Gordon threw himself silently, face downward, on the oak settle; for there arose in his heart the memory of those days, not so long ago, when he and Wat had slept under one plaid among the heather on the moors of Scotland. And the tears stood in his eyes for the thing which he had seen that night.
On their way back Barra had bubbled over with laughing sneers at the downfall of his immaculate and virtuous cousin, but Will Gordon had paced along sad and silent by his side. Ancient loyalty kept him without words, yet in his heart he condemned Lochinvar most bitterly, far more intensely indeed even than Barra.
Maisie and Kate were sitting busily sewing at their delicate white seams when the two men entered. The little Dutch lamp had been carefully trimmed, and the whole room radiated cosiest comfort. As was her wont, Kate's place was by the window, where she sat looking at her work, keeping a somewhat cold and white face steadfastly upon the monotonous business of needle and thread.
Maisie sat sad and a little reminiscent of recent tears by the lamp. Her eyes were moist, and she did not look at all in the direction of Barra and her husband, as they entered.
A sense of strain in the air paralyzed conversation after the first greetings had been interchanged. These were loud and eager on the side of Barra, almost inaudible on the part of Kate and Maisie; and as for Will Gordon, he lay where he had flung himself so suddenly down upon the long oaken couch.
"Adventures are to the adventurous, and to-night we have adventured indeed," at last began my Lord of Barra, speaking directly to his hostess. "Your husband, with much kindness, accompanied me on my rounds of inspection, and, among other curious discoveries, it was made entirely plain to us why our polite acquaintance Lochinvar was in such a hurry to leave us."
Barra paused with a certain pleasure and appreciation of his own wit in his voice. But no one spoke in the room. Will Gordon, indeed, gave an inarticulate groan and plunged heavily over upon the settle with his face to the wall. Maisie turned her back a little more upon the speaker, while Kate bent lower upon her sewing, as if the dim light had suddenly made it harder for her to see the stitches.
"And if you hesitate to believe the extraordinary things I have to tell you, my friend here, Captain Gordon of the Covenanting regiment, will tell you where, in the discharge of my duty as provost-marshal of the camp, it was our business to penetrate, and in what company and in what circumstances we found your cousin of Lochinvar."
"We do not want to hear. It was all our fault!" said Maisie, turning suddenly full upon the speaker. Unconsciously to himself, Barra had been using a somewhat pompous and judicial tone, as though he were pronouncing judgment upon a hardened offender.
At Maisie's words, the provost-marshal instantly sat erect in his chair. He was exceedingly astonished. A few hours before he had seen these two women stern almost to severity over a mere breach of good manners. He could not imagine that now they would not utterly reject and condemn such a reprobate as Wat Gordon had proved himself to be. He felt that he must surely have been misunderstood, so he proceeded to make his meaning clear.
"But I tell you plainly, my ladies," Barra continued, still more impressively, "that your husband and I found your cousin of Lochinvar at the Hostel of the Coronation, of which you may have heard – there spending his living with harlots, flaunting their endearments in a public place, and afterwards brawling with the meanest and rudest boors of the camp."
"And I do not wonder!" cried Maisie Lennox, emphatically, "after the way he was used in this house, which ought to have been a home to him. William Gordon, I wonder how, as a Christian man, you could permit your cousin to be so used!" she continued, fiercely turning upon her husband and bursting into tears.
Will Gordon groaned inarticulately from the settle. He had not been present at the time, but he knew well that with women such a transparent subterfuge would avail him nothing.
"Why, Maisie," he began, speaking from the depths of the pillow, "did not you yourself – "
"I do not think," said Barra, looking over to Will, "that your wife understands that the Hostel of the Coronation is, of all the haunts of sin in this city of Amersfort, the vilest and the worst. The man who would make his good name a byword there is certainly unfit to have the honor of admission into a circle so gracious, into society so pure as that in which I first found him. I speak as the censor of the morals of the army, and also as one who has suffered many things for conscience' sake and in order to deserve the praise of them that do well."
Kate looked up for the first time since Will and Barra had come in.
As the latter finished speaking he noticed that her eyes were very dark, and yet at the same time very bright. The black of the pupil had overspread the iris so that the whole eye at a distance appeared as dark as ink, but deep within the indignant light of a tragic love burned steadily, like a lamp in the night.
The girl spoke quickly and clearly, as if the words had been forced from her.
"Had I been so used at the only place I called 'home,' when I was a stranger in a strange land, I tell you all I should have gone straight to the Hostel of the Coronation – or worse, if worse might be!" she cried, indignantly.
"And so also would I!" cried Maisie, with still greater emphasis, sticking her needle viciously into the table and breaking it as she spoke.
The settle creaked as Will Gordon leaped to his feet.
"Silly women, ye ken not what ye say!" he said, sternly. "Be wise and plead rather with the man in whose hands our cousin's very life may lie, for the deeds of this black night."
"His life – his life!" cried, instantly, Maisie and Kate together.
The latter rose to her feet, letting all her white bravery of seamstressing slip unheeded to the ground. Maisie, on her part, turned a pale and tear-stained face eagerly up to her husband.
"Yes," said Barra, swiftly, eager to tell the story first, "it is true – his life; for Walter Gordon, being in company at the place I have mentioned with a light woman, brawled and insulted those who sat near him, offering to assert and defend her virtue at the sword's point. Then when he was withstood and threatened with arrest by my officers, as their duty was, he turned fiercely upon them and upon others, the supporters of law and order, and now he lies in prison awaiting trial for murder!"
Kate caught the table with her hand at the last terrible word, which Barra hissed out with concentrated fury and hatred.
"Is this true?" she said, in a low voice, making a great effort to regain her calmness. She turned to Will Gordon as she spoke.
"Nay," said Will, "indeed I know nothing of the cause of the quarrel. But certain it is that there has been a most fierce brawl, and that in the affray certain men have been grievously wounded, if not killed."
"And is our Wat in prison?" demanded Maisie, fiercely.
"He lies in the military prison of the city awaiting his trial by court-martial!" replied the provost.
Maisie turned her about and caught her husband by the braid of his coat.
"Go you to him at once – you must! Tell him it is all our fault – we have been unhappy and to blame, Kate and I – ask him to forgive."
And, being overwrought and strained, she put her head down on Will Gordon's breast and wept aloud.
Kate went to her and took her hand gently. And to her Maisie instantly turned, setting her husband aside with a pathetic little gesture of renunciation, as something which has been proven untrustworthy. Then, still leaning on Kate's shoulder, she passed slowly from the room. As Kate McGhie opened the door she flashed one glance, quick with measureless anger and contempt, back upon the two men who stood gazing after her. Then she passed out.
There was a long silence between the provost-marshal and his host after the women had disappeared.
At last Barra broke in upon the awkward pause with a laugh of scorn which ended with something like a sigh.
"Oh, women! women," he cried. "From what pits will ye not dig the clay to make you your gods!"
"He had been our friend so long, and in such bitter passes and desperate ventures," said Will Gordon, excusingly, speaking of Wat in a hushed voice almost as one would speak of the dead.
Barra shrugged his shoulders to intimate that the whole sex was utterly impossible of comprehension.
"Nevertheless, you will give our poor cousin your best word and offices to-morrow?" Will Gordon went on, anxiously.
"I shall see the prince in person," answered Barra, promptly, "and I shall make my endeavor to arrange that the prisoner shall not be tried by court-martial – so that nothing summary may take place, and no sentence be hastily or vindictively carried out."
Will Gordon blanched at the word "summary," which in the severely disciplined army of the States-General had but one meaning.
He conducted his guest to the door in silence. The moonlight was casting deep shadows in the high-gabled street of Zaandpoort and glittering on the pole-axes and muskets of the provost's guard who stood without, stamping their feet impatiently and waiting the appearance of their leader.
"Till to-morrow, then!" said Will Gordon, as he parted.
"Till to-morrow!" replied the provost-marshal, more heartily than he had yet spoken, giving him his hand.
But as he walked down the street towards the camp he smiled a smile from under the thin, drooping mustache which showed his teeth. They glittered white in the moonlight like a dog's.
CHAPTER XII
THE PRISON OF AMERSFORT
The prison of the city of Amersfort stood at the corner of one of its most ancient streets, and the military portion of it exposed a long scarped wall to the public, broken only by a single line of small windows triply barred with iron stanchions of the thickness of a man's wrist. These windows were only separated from the street by a low wall and a strong but wide-meshed railing of wrought iron. In the large room of the jail, where only those prisoners were kept who were detained for slight offences, or who awaited trial, the unglazed squares of the window were large enough to admit of a pole and small basket being protruded, so that it should hang within reach of the passers-by. One of the inmates was appointed to stand with this curious fishing-rod in his hand, and the plaintive wail, "Remember the poor prisoners of the prince!" resounded all day along the ancient thoroughfare.
But Wat was too important a guest to be placed in this common room. By special direction of the provost-marshal he had a cell assigned to him in a tower only a few yards above the level of the street. His apartment had two windows, one of which being in the belly of the tower looked up and down the thoroughfare. He could see the passengers as they went to and fro, and if any had cared to stop he might even have spoken with them.
Wat paid little attention to the street for the first day or two which he passed in the cell. Mostly he sat on the low pallet bed with his head sunk deeply in his hands. He gave himself up completely to melancholy thoughts. During the first day he had expected every hour to be brought before a military tribunal. But the fact that the day passed without incident more discomposing than the visits of the turnkey with his scanty meals informed Wat that he was not to be tried by any summary method of jurisdiction, though in the angry state of the feelings of the army against the townsfolk of Amersfort, and especially smouldering hatred of the provost-marshal's men, this would doubtless have been Wat's best chance.
But his mortal enemy did not wish to run the risk of seeing his rival set free with but some slight penalty, and, being in a position of great influence, he had his will. Day by day passed in the prison, each wearier and grayer than the other. Finally, Wat took to his barred windows and watched the stream of traffic. As the poignancy of his regret dulled to a steady ache, he became deeply interested in the boys who sported in the gutters and sailed ships of wood and paper in every spate and thunder-shower. He watched for the rosy-cheeked maids, with their black, clattering sabots, who paused a moment to adjust their foot-gear with a swish of pleated skirts and a glimpse of dainty ankle; and then, having once stopped, stood a long time gossiping with their plain-visaged, flat-capped, broad-breeched lovers. Above all, Wat loved the vagrant dogs that wandered lazily about the shady corners and fought one another like yellow, whirling hoops in the dust.
Often he would leave his meagre meal untouched in order to watch them. One dog in particular interested him more than all the human beings in the Street of the Prison. He was a long, thin-bodied beast of a yellowish-gray color, of no particular ancestry, and certainly without personal charms of any kind, save as it might be those incident to phenomenal and unredeemed ugliness.
To this ignoble hound Wat daily devoted a large proportion of his dole of bread. It amused him to entice the beast each day nearer to the railings, and then, while other stouter and better-favored animals were for the moment at a distance, Wat would deftly propel a pellet of bread to this faithful attendant. At first, the pariah of the Street of the Prison suspected a trap. For during an eventful life he had on several occasions been taken in with pepper balls and second-hand mustard plasters by the brisk young men of the hospitals and of the Netherlands trading companies.
Now it chanced that while Wat thus played good Samaritan to a cur of the gutter, two women stood at the outer gate of the prison. It was not the first occasion they had been there, nor yet the first time they had been denied entrance.
Maisie and Kate, with women's generosity and swift repentance, still blaming themselves deeply for their hastiness, had gone to inquire for Lochinvar early on the morning after he had been put in prison.
But neither by persuasions nor yet with all their little store of money could they buy even a moment's interview. The jailer's orders were too imperative. Some one high in authority had given the sternest injunctions that no one was to be allowed to see the prisoner on any pretext. Will had accompanied them on one occasion in his new officer's uniform, and even discovered in the chief turnkey an old comrade of Groningen. But it was vain. Strict obedience to his instructions was the keeper's life, as well as his bread and his honor. Simply, he dared not, he said, permit any to see that particular prisoner.
But, had they known it, there was a way of access to Wat. As they came out of the prison gates they met Barra. The provost-marshal, with a gloomy countenance, informed them that the prince took a very serious view of the affair of their cousin. However, he was in hopes that the sentence, though severe and exemplary, would not in any case be death. Probably, however, it might involve a very long period of imprisonment.
"The prince and his council have resolved that an example must be made. There have been, they say, far too many of these brawls in the army. It is such occurrences which breed ill-blood betwixt the soldiers and the townsfolk."
"But in that case," said Maisie, "why not persuade the prince to make an example of somebody else – not, surely, of our cousin Wat?"
Barra shrugged his shoulders.
"I am afraid," he said, softly, "that we cannot always arrange matters so that the penalties shall fall on shoulders whose sufferings will not hurt us. But you, dear ladies, can wholly trust me to use all my influence, so that your friend may soon find himself again at liberty."
Thus talking, they had turned to the right, and were now walking down the Street of the Prison. Maisie went a little ahead with her hand on her husband's arm, thinking that perhaps if Kate were left to herself she might be able to move the provost-marshal to kindlier purposes. Barra lingered as much as he could, in order to separate Kate and himself as widely as possible from the pair in front.
They passed close to Wat's window, and the prisoner watched them go by with black despair in his heart.
As they reached the gloomy angle of the prison, Barra indicated, with a wave of his hand, a remarkable gargoyle in the shape of a devil's head, frowning from the battlements of the gray, beetling tower. Through the closed bars of his window Wat noticed the gesture, as Barra intended that he should.
"My God!" he cried aloud, to the deaf walls, "he has brought her this way to gloat with her over my prison-house!"
And he flew at the bars of his window, striking and shaking them till his hands were bruised and bleeding.
"Let me get out! God in heaven! Let me get out – that I may kill him!" he cried, in the madness of agony.
But the bars resisted his utmost endeavor. Not so much as a particle of mortar stirred, and after spending all his strength in vain, Wat fell back on his hard pallet utterly exhausted, and lay there for hours in a vague and dazed unconsciousness.
The sullen, tranced hours verged towards evening, and Wat still lay motionless.
The keeper had twice been to his cell with food. But finding on the occasion of his second visit the previous supply of bread and water untouched, he had merely laid down the small loaf of black bread which was served out to the prisoners every night, and so departed.
At intervals a low voice seemed to steal into Wat's cell through the silence of the prison.
"A friend would speak with you – a friend would speak with you."
The words came up from the street beneath. At the third or fourth repetition Wat rose wearily and, with a dull and hopeless heart, went to the window whence he was wont to feed the dog with pellets of bread in the morning. A girl, small and slim of body, plainly attired in a black dress, stood directly underneath. Wat was about to turn back again to his couch, thinking that the summons could not have been intended for him, when the maid eagerly beckoned him to remain.
"Do you not remember me?" she said; "I am the Little Marie. I have never gone back to the Hostel of the Coronation. I have been very wicked. I know I have brought you here. I know that you cannot forgive me; but tell me something – anything that I may do for you?"
"It is not at all your fault that I am here," replied Wat Gordon, "only that of my own mad folly. Do not reproach yourself, nor trouble yourself, I pray you. There is nothing at all that you can do for me – "
"No one you love to whom I could carry a message – a letter?" The girl looked wistfully up at him as she said this. "I would deliver it so safely, so secretly."
A little before, Wat would gladly, eagerly indeed, have accepted the offer, and sent her at once to the street of Zaandpoort, in spite of his dismissal. But now his eyes had seen.
"Nay, Little Marie," he said, smiling sadly. "There is no one whom I love, no one who cares in the least to hear of me or of my welfare."
The girl stood still, plucking at the lace on her black sleeve, and looking down.
"Run home now, Little Marie," said Wat, kindly. "I am glad you have left the Hostel of the Coronation. Do not go back there any more."
The girl stood still in her place beneath the window.
At last she said, without looking up, "There is one whom you do not love, who cares much that you are in prison and alone!"
"And who may that be, Marie – old Jack Scarlett, mayhap?"
The girl looked up for a moment – a sudden, flashing look through blinding tears.
"Only bad-hearted Little Marie – that would die for you!" she said, brokenly.
And without caring even to wipe away her tears, she walked slowly down the midst of the Street of the Prison, seeing no one at all, and answering none of the greetings that were showered upon her.