MY LORD OF BARRA'S VOW
Kate stood at her favorite window, looking down upon five little boys
playing barley break in a solemn plantigrade Dutch fashion in the dust
of Zaandpoort Street by the canal. Opposite her stood Barra. He was
dressed in his customary close-fitting suit of black velvet, and his
slim waist was belted by the orange sash of a high councillor, while
by his side swung a splendid sword in a scabbard of gold. A light cape
of black velvet was about his shoulders, and its orange lining of fine
silk drooped gracefully over his arm.
"Listen to me, dear lady," he was saying. "I am a soldier, and not
a courtier. I have not glozing words to woo you with. No more than
a plain man's honest words. I love you, and from that I shall never
change. At present I can offer you but a share of the exile's bitter
bread. But when the prince comes to his own, there shall be none in
broad Scotland able to count either men or money with Murdo, Earl of
Barra and of the Small Isles."
"My Lord Barra," said Kate, "I thank you for your exceeding courtesy.
I feel your surpassing condescension. But I cannot marry you now nor
yet again. If I loved you at all I should be proud and glad to take you
by the hand and walk out of the door with you into the wide world--for
you renouncing friends, fame, wealth, all, as if they were so many dead
leaves of the autumn. But since I do not and cannot love you, believe
that the proffer of great honor and rank can never alter my decision.
This, indeed, I have told you before."
"Well do I know," answered the high councillor, "that you have spoken,
concerning me, words hard and cruel to be borne. But that was before
either of us understood the depth of my devotion--before you knew
that I desired, as I seek for salvation, to make you scarcely less in
honor than the queen herself, among those isles of the sea, where true
hearts abide. The cause of our religion is great. Help me to make of
our Scotland a land of faith and freedom. Love me for the sake of the
cause, Kate, if not for mine own most unworthy sake."
"The cause is indeed still great and precious to me. I have been
honored to suffer the least things for it. Nevertheless the cause is
not to be served by one doing wrong, but by many doing right. You
are--I believe it--an honorable man, my Lord Barra. You will serve
your master faithfully till that good day comes when Scotland shall
again have freedom to worship under kirk-rigging or roof-tree, or an it
liketh her under the broad span of the sky."
"But you carry in your heart the image of a traitor," said Barra, a
little more fiercely--"a double traitor, one whom I have seen false
both to his country and to you. Know you that only my bare word stands
between your lover and death?"
"I know not whether Walter Gordon be dead or alive," replied Kate,
gently. "I say not that I love him, nor yet that he loves me. I do not
know. But I say that if he does love me, in the only way I care to be
loved, he would rather die a thousand deaths than that, in order to
preserve his life, his true love should wed a man whom she cares not
for either as lover or as husband."
"Then you will not love me?" said he, bending his head towards her as
if to look into her soul.
"I cannot, my Lord Barra," she made him answer; "love comes not
like a careful man-servant. It runs not like a well-trained dog at
the sounding of a whistle. One cannot draw back the arras of the
heart and say to love, 'Hither and speedily!' The wind bloweth, say
the preachers, where it listeth. And so love also comes not with
observation. Rather, like a thunderstorm, it bears victoriously up
against the wind. For just when the will is most set against love, then
it takes completest possession of the heart."
"Could you have loved me," he asked, more calmly, "if you had known no
other? If the other existed not?"
"That I know not," said Kate. "All my life long I have never loved
man or woman where I wanted to love, or was bid to love. Whether,
therefore, in this case or that one could have loved serves no purpose
in the asking. Nor, indeed, can it be answered. For the only issue is,
that of a surety I love you not. And do you, my lord, of your most
gentle courtesy, take that answer as one frankly given by an honest
maid, and so depart content. There are in this land and in our own
country a thousand fairer, a thousand worthier than I."
"Kate," said Barra, more intently and tenderly than he had yet spoken,
"some day, and in some isle of quiet bliss where all evil and untoward
things are put behind us, I will yet make you love me. For never have
I thus set all my fancy on any woman before. And by the word of Murdo,
Lord of Barra, none but you will I wed, and, by the honor of my clan,
no other shall have you but I!"
He held out his hand. Kate, desiring him to go, gave him hers a little
reluctantly. He bent to it and kissed it fervently.
"On this hand I swear," he said, slowly and solemnly, "that while I
live it shall be given in marriage to none other, but shall be mine
alone. By the graves that are green on the Isle of Ashes and by the
honor of the thirty chieftains of Barra--I swear it."
Kate took her hand quickly again to her.
"Ye have taken a vain oath, my lord," she said, "for marriage and the
giving of a hand are not within the compulsion of one, but are the
agreement of two. And if this hand is ever given to a man my heart
shall go with it, or else Kate McGhie's marriage-bed shall be her
resting-grave!"
* * * * *
It was but two years since the Little Marie had carried her first
basket of flowers to the streets of Brussels. From an ancient farm nigh
to the city she had come, bringing with her her fresh complexion, her
beauty, her light, swift, confident, easily influenced spirit.
Then, while yet a child, she had been hunted down, petted, betrayed,
and forsaken by the man who, being on a visit to Brussels, had first
been attracted by her childish simplicity. It chanced that in the dark
days of her despair she had found her way to Amersfort, and finally
to the Hostel of the Coronation. She had been there but a bare week
when Wat came into her life, and his words to the girl were the first
of genuine, unselfish kindness she had listened to in that abode of
smiling misery and radiant despair.
As a trampled flower raises its head after a gentle rain, so her
scarcely dulled childish purity reawakened within her, and with it--all
the more fiercely that it came too late--the love that suffereth all
things and upbraideth not. Marie was suddenly struck to the heart by
the agony of her position. She might love, but none could give her back
true love in return. Her soul abode in blank distress after the fray
had been quelled and Walter led away to prison. Without speech to any
at the inn of the Coronation, Marie fled to the house of a decent woman
of her own country, who undertook the washing and dressing of fine
linen--dainty cobweb frilleries for the ladies of the city, and stiffer
garmentry for the severe and sober court of the Princess of Orange.
For love had been a plant of swift growth in the lush and ill-tended
garden of the girl's heart. Constantly after this both dawn and dusk
found her beneath Wat's window. Marie contrived a little basket
attached to a rope, which he let down from the window in the swell
of the tower. She it was who instructed Wat how to make the first
cord of sufficient length and strength by ravelling a stocking
and replaiting the yarn. In this fashion Marie brought to Wat's
prison-cell such fruits as the warehouses of the Nederlandish companies
afforded--strange-smelling delicacies of the utmost Indies, and early
dainties from gardens nearer home. Linen, too, fresh and clean, she
brought him, and flowers--at all of which, for the consideration of a
dole of gold, the jailer winked, so that Wat's heart was abundantly
touched by the pathetic devotion of the girl. Scarce could she be
induced to accept the money which Wat put into her basket when he let
it down again. And even then Marie took the gold only that she might
have the means of obtaining other delicacies for Wat--such as were
beyond the reach of purchase out of the meagre stipend she received
from the laundress of fine linen with whom her working-days were spent.
More seldom did Marie come to the Street of the Prison in the evening
after the work of the day was done. For there were many who knew her
moving to and fro in these early summer twilights, so that she feared
that her mission might be observed and Wat moved to another cell, out
of reach of the Street of the Prison.
But one afternoon of sullen clouds and murky weather, when few people
were abroad upon the streets of Amersfort, Marie sickened of the hot
steamy atmosphere of the laundry and the chatter of the maids of the
quarter, in which she was allowed to have no part. She finished her
work earlier than the others--perhaps for that reason--and stole
quietly away to the tower of Wat's prison, where it jutted out over the
cobble-stones of the pavement.
Wat was at his post, looking out, as usual, upon the slackening traffic
and quickening pleasure-seeking of the street. He was truly glad to see
the girl, and greeted her appearance with a kind smile.
"I had not expected you till the morning," he said. "But I have lived
on the freshness of your flowers all day. I have also had my cell
washed. Black Peter, my jailer, was inclined to be complaisant to me
this morning. It is his birthday, he says."
Wat smiled as he said it. For he had bestowed one of his few remaining
coins upon Peter; which, ever since, that worthy had been swallowing
to his good health in the shape of pure Hollands. Indeed, at this
moment there came from below the rollicking voice of jolly Black Peter,
singing a song which ran through a catalogue of camp pleasures and
soldierly delights, such as certainly could not all have been enjoyed
within the grim precincts of the prison of Amersfort.
"You are sure that there is no friend I can take a message to?" asked
the Little Marie, for the fiftieth time; "no beloved mistress to whom I
can carry a letter?"
"None," said Wat, smiling sadly. "But there," he continued, pointing
quickly across the Street of the Prison at a man hurrying out of sight,
"is one whom, an it please you, you may take note of. I am not able
to show you a friend. But yonder goes my heart's enemy. There at the
corner--the dark man in the suit of velvet, with the orange-lined cloak
and the sword hilted with gold."
The Little Marie darted across the street in a moment, and threaded
her way deftly among the boisterous traffic of the huxters' stalls.
Presently she came back. There was a new and dangerous excitement in
her eye.
"I know him," she said; "it is my Lord Barra, the provost-marshal. He
is your enemy, you say. It is well. But he was my enemy before he was
yours. Sleep sound," she continued, looking up at him with an eye as
clear and peaceful as a cloistered nun's. "Take no thought for your
enemy, but only, ere you sleep, say a prayer to your Scottish God for
the sinful soul of the Little Marie that loves you better than her
life."