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.