CHAPTER XLVIII
THE MASTER COMES HOME
And what in all the annals of romantic adventure could be found moreutterly hopeless than Wat Gordon's quest? He was doubly outlawed.For not only had James Stuart proclaimed him outlaw, but he had beenout with the enemies of the Prince of Orange, now King William theThird of Great Britain and Ireland. He had fought at Killiekrankieand Dunkeld. He had ridden through all the north country at Dundee'sbridle-rein. He was a fugitive from a military prison in the prince'sown province of the Netherlands. He possessed but ten golden guineasin the world. His ancestral tower of Lochinvar was little better thana dismantled fortalice. And then as to his quest, he went to seek hislove in her home, to rescue her from among her friends, and from themidst of the retainers of her father's estate, and those more numerousand reckless riders who had come with my lady the duchess from theGrenoch. Doubtless, also, my Lord of Barra would bring with him a greatattendance of his friends. The chances against Lochinvar's success wereinfinite. Another man would have given up in despair, but in the mindof Wat Gordon there was only one thought: "She called me and I will goto her. Though I am traitor and outlaw alike to the king-over-the-waterand the prince at Whitehall, proscribed alike by white rose and orangelily, I am yet all true to Kate and to love."
The desperate, unutterable details of that great mad journey can neverbe written down. For even Wat himself, in after-days, scarce rememberedhow, when one horse was wearied, he managed to exchange it for anotherand ride on--sometimes salving his conscience by leaving to theowner one of his dwindling golden guineas; or how he was attacked byfootpads and escaped, having cut down one and frightened the other intodelivering over (in trust, as it were, for King James) every stiver ofhis ill-gotten gains--poor crazed Wat meanwhile tossing his feveredhead and wavering a pistol before the knave's astonished eyes as hebade him stand and deliver.
"'Tis a lesson to you," said Wat, didactically; "ye will thank me forit one day when ye lie down to die a clean-straw death instead ofdancing your last on a gallows, with the lads crying your dying speechbeneath your very feet as ye dangle over the Grass-market."
How he won through with bare life Wat never knew; nor yet with whatdecent householders he had negotiated exchange of horses without theirconsent. For long years afterwards, whenever Wat was a little feverish,scraps of conversations used to return to him, and forgotten incidentsflashed clear upon him, which he knew must have happened during theseterrible last days ere, with the homing instinct of a wounded animalchased desperately by the hunters, he reached the little gray towerof Lochinvar set lonely in the midst of its moorland loch. Sometimeson the Edinburgh street in after-years he stumbled unexpectedly on aface he recognized. A countryman newly come into market would set hishands on his hips and stare earnestly up at him. Then Wat would sayto himself, "There goes a creditor of mine; I wonder if I gave him abetter horse than I took, or if he wants to claim the balance now."
But who in the great lord of Parliament could spy out the white-faced,desperate lad--half-hero, half-highwayman--whose supple sword flashedlike the waving of a willow wand, and whose cocked pistol was in hisfingers at the faintest hint of opposition?
It was evening of a great, solemn, serene September day when Watreached the edges of the loch, upon the little island in the midstof which stood the ancestral tower of his forebears. There was nosmoke going up from its chimneys. The water slept black from the verymargin, deeply stained with peat. The midges danced and balanced; themoor-birds cried; the old owl hooted from the gables; the retired starstwinkled reticently above, just as they had done in Wat's youth. Astrange fancy came over him. He had come home from market at Dumfries.Presently his father would cry down to him from his chamber what wasthe price of sheep on the Plainstones that day, and if that behindhandrascal, Andrew Sim of Gordieston, had paid his rent yet. His mother--
Ah! but wait; he had no father! He had seen his father's head over theport of Edinburgh, and something, he could not remember what, happenedafter that. Had he not buried his mother in the green kirkyard ofDalry? What, then, had he come home for? There was some one he loved indanger--some one with eyes deep as the depths of the still and gloomywaters that encircled Lochinvar.
Ah, now he remembered--the heart, Kate's heart of gold! It was safein his bosom. Ten days' grace when he left his cousin Will! But hadhe ridden five days or fifty? Sometimes it seemed but one day, andsometimes an eternity, since he rode away from Jack Scarlett at theford above Dunkeld.
What was that noise? An enemy? Wat clutched his sword instinctively.No, nothing more than his poor horse, the last incarnation of hiscousin Will's charger, with which he had left the stables of Dunkeld.
The poor beast had tried to drink of the peaty brew of the loch, butwhat with the fatigue and the rough riding, it had fallen forward,with its nose in the shallows, and now lay breathing out its last inrattling gasps.
Wat stooped and patted the flaccid neck as the spasms relaxed and itrolled to the side.
"Poor thing--poor thing--ye are well away. Maybe there is a heaven forhorses also, where the spirit of the beast may find the green eternalpastures, where the rein does not curb and the saddle leather nevergalls."
So saying Wat divested himself of his arms and upper clothing. Herolled them up, and put them with the saddle and equipment of his deadhorse in the safe shelter of a moss-hag. Then, with a last kiss to thegold heart, he dropped silently into the water and swam out towards theisland on which the old block-house stood.
Five minutes later Walter Gordon, Lord of Lochinvar, white as death,dripping from head to foot as if the sea had indeed given up its dead,stood on the threshold of the house of his fathers. The master had comehome.
The little gray keep on its lonely islet towering above him seemed notso high as of old. It was strangely shrunken. The isle, too, had grownsmaller to his travelled eye--probably was so, indeed, for the waterhad for many years been encroaching on the narrow insulated policies ofthe tower of Lochinvar.
There to his right was the granite "snibbing-post," to which the boatwas usually tied. The pillar had, he remembered, a hole bored throughthe head of it with a chip knocked out of the side--for making whichwith a hammer he had been soundly cuffed by his father. And there wasthe anchored household boat itself, nodding and rocking a little underthe northern castle wall, where it descended abruptly into the deeps ofthe loch.
Wat stood under the carved archway and clattered on the door with astone picked from the water-side. For the great brass knocker which heremembered had been torn off, no doubt during the troubles which hadarisen after Wat himself had been attainted for the wounding of hisGrace the Duke of Wellwood.
It was long indeed ere any one came to answer the summons, andmeanwhile Wat stood, dripping and shaking, consumed with a deadlyweakness, yet conscious of a still more deadly strength. If God wouldonly help him ever so little, he thought--grant him but one night'squiet rest, he could yet do all that which he had come so fast and sofar to accomplish.
At last he heard a stir in the tower above. A footstep came steadilyand lightly along the stone passages. The thin gleam of a rushlightpenetrated beneath the door, and shed a solid ray through the greatworn key-hole. The bolts growled and screeched rustily, as ifcomplaining at being so untimely disturbed. The door opened, and therebefore Wat stood a sweet, placid-browed old lady in the laced cap andstomacher of the ancient days.
"Jean!" he cried, "Jean Gordon, here is your laddie come hame." Hespoke just as he had done more than twenty years ago, when many a timehe had fallen out with his mother, and betaken himself to the sanctuaryof Jean's Wa's by the side of the Garpel Glen.
For Jean Gordon it was, the recluse of the Holy Linn, his cousin Will'sancient nurse and kinswoman, and to them both the kindliest and mostlovely old maid in the world.
"Wi' laddie, laddie, what has gotten ye? Ye are a' white and shakin',dripping wet, too; come ben and get a change and let me put ye to yourbed."
"What day of the month is this?" cried
Wat, eagerly, even before he hadcrossed the threshold.
"Laddie, what should auld Jean Gordon ken aboot times and seasons?Nocht ava--ye couldna expect it. But there is a decent man in thekitchen that mayhap can tell ye--Peter McCaskill, the Curate o'Dalry, puir body. He was sorely in fear of being rabbled by the HillFolk, so he cam' his ways here, silly body. There's no' a man in thecountry-side wad hae laid hand on him--if he would just say his prayerwithoot the book, gie his bit sermon, and stop havering aboot KingJamie--at least, till he comes to his ain again."
Thus gossiping to keep up Wat Gordon's spirits, the ancient dame ledthe way down the passages, with a foot that was yet light upon theheather, though seventy years scarcely counted up all her mortal span.
"Clerk McCaskill," cried Jean, "ye'll mind Maister Walter? Rise up andwelcome him! For it is in his hoose that ye are sheltered, and, indeed,his very ale that ye are drinkin' at this moment."
Peter McCaskill rose to his feet and held out his hand to Wat. He wasdressed apparently in the same ancient green surtout he had worn in theyear of Bothwell--a garment which seemed never to get any worse, noryet to drop piecemeal from his shoulders with age, but to renew itselffrom decade to decade in a decrepit but evergreen youth.
"I am rejoiced to see you in your ain castle, my lord," said thecurate, ceremoniously. Then, catching sight of the pale, desperateface, he exclaimed, in a different tone, "Preserve us, laddie, what hasta'en ye? Hae ye slain a man to his wounding--a young man to his hurt?Are the dead-runners on your track?"
For, indeed, Wat stood like a wild thing, hard beset by the hunters,which at the last has turned to bay in its lair.
But Wat put aside all questionings with a wave of his hand, a movementwhich had something of his old, swift recklessness in it, as of thedays when they named him the Wildcat of Lochinvar.
"Tell me the day of the month," he gasped, as he stood there in themidst of the floor before the fire of logs which burned on the ironsof the house-place, swaying a little on his feet, and ever checkinghimself like a man drunken with wine.
The curate took a little calendar from his pocket--a record of saints'days and services, but interspersed with the reckonings of ale-housesand the scores of cock-fightings.
"'Tis the eve of the eighth day of September," he said, moistening hisplump thumb to turn over the leaf that he might not be mistaken in themonth.
"Thank God, I have yet two days!" cried Wat, and fell forward upon theshoulder of the curate.