MISTRESS MAISIE LENNOX, DIPLOMATIST
When they reached the outer air, Wat drew a long breath. He was still
alive and still a soldier of the States-General, and now at last he had
a whole week's time to think uninterruptedly of Kate. But first of all
he must see her. He was for starting off in the direction of Zaandpoort
Street, but the thoughts of his companion were thirsty thoughts.
"I declare," he cried, "my throat is parched like an Edinburgh
ash-backet on these accursed roads. Let us go to a change-house and
slake our thrapples with a draught of Hollands and water. 'Tis the poor
best that the country affords."
But Wat had other things than Hollands in his mind--the distracting
ripple of Kate's hair, and the way she had of holding the fingers of
one hand on her side when she stood for a moment pensive.
He searched in his belt for a silver thaler, and gave it to Scarlett.
"Go drink, and meet me at the camp to-morrow," he said. Then he
strode away towards the street of Zaandpoort, leaving his companion
alternately looking at the broad unclipped silver piece in his hand,
and staring after him in astonishment.
"The young fool is either mad or in love," confided Scarlett to the
world at large; "but he has not forgotten how to draw a good blade--so
he cannot be so very deeply in love as yet!"
Wat started out boldly and bravely enough, but so soon as he reached
the lilac-bushes which were planted at the foot of the dam of
Zaandpoort he began to feel his shyness returning trebly upon him.
He had not been afraid during the night when he stood surrounded by
assassins and enemies. Joyously and lightheartedly he had crossed
swords with the greatest master-of-arms in Europe. But now, when he
was at the foot of a little wooden stairway, the thought of a simple,
slim-figured girl at the top of it caused the hot blood to tingle in
his cheek, and little helpless pulses to throb and sting in his palms.
Gladly would he have turned and fled. His hands had grown suddenly
great and dirty. His military coat appeared so frayed and draggled with
the night dews and the accidents of the way that he dared not venture
in such a guise into the presence of the lady of his dreams.
But it chanced that Will Gordon, his cousin, had been shaving at a
small mirror which he had set against a twisted chimney-stack on the
roof, both because it was a fine morning and because in the lodging in
the street of Zaandpoort the chambers were small.
"Welcome back, Wat!" he cried, craning his neck over the parapet, and
wiping the soap from the razor upon the high stone coping. "Went your
night-ride to rights?"
"It went most mightily to wrongs!" cried Wat, as cheerfully.
"Nevertheless, in spite of it you are here, safe and sound. Come up,
man, therefore, and tell us the tale. My little lass will doubtless
have something fragrant for breakfast in a moment."
Whereupon he cried lustily down to Maisie, his wife, who was at the pan
in the kitchen: "Put on a full platterful more. Here is our adventurer
returned with a torn coat, a piteous tale, and a right hungry stomach!"
There was clearly no escape now, so Wat, with his heart in his boots,
strode as manfully as he could up the stair which he had been wont to
climb but a day or two before with such complete and careless lack of
thought.
When he opened the outer door, a cheerful smell of morning cookery took
him gratefully by the nostrils, for the long ride and brisk adventure
had quickened his appetite.
"Hither, cousin mine!" cried a light and pleasant voice from the
kitchen.
"And welcome home again!" Maisie added, as he appeared in the doorway.
She had both her hands busy with eggs and flour about the cooking-pan.
"I cannot shake hands with you, Wat," she said, "but to spite William I
will give you a nice kiss."
And she came straight to him where he stood balancing himself
uncertainly just within the threshold. Wat hesitated for the smallest
part of a second.
"Do it quickly, or the eggs will be spoiled," she said, standing on
tiptoe with her floury hands behind her.
"A kiss is worse spoiled by haste than ever an egg can be," said Wat,
as with the kindly pressure of her lips his words and his confidence
began to come back to him.
At his first entering in he had seen Kate stand at the other side of
the fire from Maisie, but now he looked in vain for her. Yet she had
not left the room. Only at the first word of kissing she had entrenched
herself behind a great oaken settle and on the farther side of a wide
Dutch table, where, with her head bent upon an earthenware bowl, she
began to prepare a salad with the most absolute attention and studious
care.
Having kissed Maisie most dutifully, Wat went forward to offer his hand
to Kate. She gave hers to him quickly, and yet, as it seemed to him,
reluctantly also. Instinctively she kept a chair between them as she
did so.
"See, it is all over with oil and chopped lettuce," she said, looking
plaintively at her hand, as though Wat had been personally responsible
for the defilement.
Maisie was at the farther end of the room, bending over her saucepans.
Wat leaned quickly across the table to Kate.
"Are you glad I have come back?" he asked, in a low voice.
"You had a fine morning for your ride," she replied, looking down
at the salad and mixing the ingredients with the most scrupulous
exactitude.
Wat straightened himself instantaneously as if on parade, and stalked
with much dignity to the end of the room at which Maisie was still busy.
And this caused him to miss a singular look which Kate cast after
him, a look of mingled pity and entreaty, wholly wasted on the square
shoulders and erect head, but from which, had Wat caught it, he might
have learned that though it may sometimes be well to appear proud with
a girl, nevertheless, if you love her, not too soon and not too often.
Presently Will Gordon came bustling down to breakfast, having cleaned
his accoutrements and adorned himself with such sober trappings as
were permitted by the Spartan taste of the Covenanting regiment.
Will had still that noisily cheerful self-consciousness which always
characterizes the very young husband doing the unaccustomed honors of
his house.
"Sit down and be welcome, Wat, lad," he cried, "and tell us all the
tale of your journeying."
And so at the table which Maisie had covered with plain coarse Dutch
linen, very unlike the fine cloths which she had left behind her
in Scotland, the four sat down. It was a heartsome meal, and after
a little while Lochinvar began to tell his tale, giving himself
little honor, making nothing of the danger, and dwelling much on the
ridiculous aspect of Haxo the Bull, his ill-favored Calf, and his
bald-headed Killer.
As the tale proceeded Will kept up a constant fire of interjections,
such as "That was well thought on!" "Bravely! my lad!" and "Well done,
Glenkens!" But presently Maisie left her seat, and came round to sit
beside Wat as he began to tell of entering alone at midnight into the
dark house of Brederode with the unknown danger before and the three
traitors behind. All the time Kate sat still, saying nothing and eating
nothing, her lips a little open and tremulous, and her dark eyes
shining with a light in them like a sunbeam in the still water of a sea
cave.
And when it came to the telling of the combat, and the little chance of
life that he had, it so fared that Wat raised his eyes to Kate's, and
lo! tears were running silently down her face and falling unregarded on
her white gown.
In a moment more she had risen and left the table, slipping like a
gleam of light into the next room.
Maisie looked up with much astonishment as she caught the waft of the
girl's gown.
"Why, Kate!" she exclaimed, and without another word sped after her.
When she reached the little room where Kate slept, she found the girl
standing by the window, leaning her head against the thin curtain. She
kept her back to her friend, and did not turn round at her entrance.
Maisie carefully closed the door and went up quickly to Kate. Silently
she put her arm about the slim and supple waist.
"I--I am not crying--I am not indeed!" said Kate, a little indignantly,
putting her hand on her friend's wrist as if to push it away.
"No--no, of course you are not," said Maisie, making (to say the least
of it) an affirmation the truth of which was not wholly obvious. For
the girl's tears dropped steadily upon her white gown, a great one even
falling warm upon Maisie's hand at her waist, while all her slender
body was shaken with sobs.
"It was only--" Kate began, and then stopped.
Maisie sighed as she sat down on the white bed, which, as was its
occupant's custom, had been made up with military precision quite an
hour before. She drew Kate down beside her gently till the girl's head
rested on her shoulders.
"There, there, my lamb," she whispered, soothingly, when at last Kate
found what most she wanted--a soft and comfortably sympathetic surface
to cry upon. Maisie's hand passed lightly over the shapely head with
its straying and enticing thatch of dark love-locks, and her voice
crooned and cooed over her friend like a dove over its mate in the
nest. Then for a long time she continued to hush the girl in her arms,
as if she had been but a little ailing child.
Once there came the sound of a foot heavily masculine in the passage,
and a hand was laid on the latch. Kate made a motion to rise and dry
her face, but Maisie's arms held her tight.
"Go away, William! Go away at once!" she cried, with instant change of
tone, her voice ringing out in such imperious fashion that Will Gordon,
her husband, fled back to the sitting-room, feeling that he had just
saved himself on the brink of some absolutely fatal mistake.
Yet all the while Maisie offered her friend not a word of sympathy,
only the comforting of silent understanding, the touch of loving lips
and hands, and the pressure of loving arms. Kate (she said to herself)
would tell her what she wished at her own time. Maisie had a woman's
tact and did not press for an explanation of a girl's wayward moods, as
even the wisest of men would have done on such an occasion.
"Oh, he might have been killed," at last Kate's words came in a rushing
whisper, as she lifted her face a little higher on Maisie's shoulder.
"And I had sent him away so cruelly. And when he came back I never
told him that I was glad to see him, Maisie. I snatched away my hand."
She added the last words as if that indefensible action had only
crowned a long series of enormities.
"Well," answered her friend, smiling very lovingly down at her, "he is
not gone yet. Come back and say it now. I dare say he will forgive you,
if you look at him like that."
But Kate only sadly shook her head, a little reproachfully that such
a revolutionary proposal should come from one of Maisie's pretended
sympathy and understanding.
"How can I go back?" she said, hopelessly. "They _saw_ me crying, and
they would sit and look at me all the time--like--like--" (and Kate
paused while she searched the universe for a comparison to express the
most utter and abject stupidity) "well, just like men."
Yet she sighed and turned her face a little more inward towards
Maisie's shoulder. "No, decidedly," she said, as if after all she had
been considering the question; "I cannot go back."
Maisie loosened her arms from about Kate's neck. "Then you shall not,
sweeting," she said, with determination, as if a coercive army had been
at hand; "lie you still there and I will get them away. Trust me, they
shall know no more than it is good for men to know."
And she nodded her head to express the limited capacity of mankind,
and the absolute necessity that there was for the wiser portion of the
race to maintain them in a condition of strictly defined and diplomatic
ignorance.
Before she went out of the bedroom Maisie set by the girl's side a
small bottle of the sweet-scented water of Cologne, one which Wat
himself had brought back from his last campaign. "He carried that
nearly a year in his haversack," Maisie said, irrelevantly, as she set
the vial within reach of Kate's hand. "I will go send him to take a
bath. He must have ridden both hard and fast to be back from Brederode
by six o'clock in the morning."
"You will not tell them," whispered the girl, faintly, catching at
Maisie's hand as she went out, "nor let him think that I am--foolish?"
"Trust to me," said Maisie Lennox, nodding her head and smiling
serenely back as she went out.
In the sitting-chamber she found the two young men still at the table
talking together. They stopped with badly assumed masculine ease as
she entered. Since Will's rebuff at the chamber door they had sat
conversing in perfunctory and uncomfortable sentences, their ears
directed towards the door like those of a dog that hears an unkenned
foot on the stair, their attention anywhere but upon the subject
concerning which they were speaking.
Maisie began at once in the hushed and important tone of the messenger
fresh from the seat of war. "Kate could not sleep last night for the
noise of the wooden sabots upon the street outside. She has had a
headache all this morning, and I ought not to have let her listen to
Wat's tale of horrors--"
"I trust I did not--" Wat began, suddenly conscience-stricken.
"No, no," said Maisie, motioning him to sit down, "it was all my fault,
not yours at all--I should have bethought me in time. She will be quite
well after she has slept. Be sure you remember to walk quietly with
your great boots," she added, looking viciously at her husband.
At this hint Wat rose to go. In doing so he accidentally pushed his
stiff wooden chair back from the table with a loud creak, and then
abjectly recoiled from Maisie's face of absolute horror.
He sat down again disconsolately. Will Gordon and he cast a pathetic
look at each other. Their place was obviously not here. So one after
the other they bent and pulled off their heavy foot-gear, while Maisie
watched them with uplifted finger of the most solemnizing caution. Then
very softly the two men stole down the stairs, carrying their boots in
their hands.
Maisie listened till they were fairly out of the house. Then she went
directly to Kate's door. She opened it and set her head within. There
was an expression of almost heavenly peace and serenity upon her face.
The consciousness of infinite well-doing dwelt upon it.
"It is all right!" she said, "they will never so much as guess why.
They went out like lambs--carrying their boots under their arms!" And
again Maisie nodded her head with smiling encouragement.
And yet diplomatists are usually selected from among men.