MAISIE'S NIGHT QUEST
In the street of Zaandpoort, upon a certain evening, it had grown early
dark. The sullen, sultry day had broken down at the gloaming into a
black and gurly night of rain, which came in fierce dashes, alternating
with fickle, veering flaws and yet stranger lulls and stillnesses.
Anon, when the rain slackened, the hurl of the storm overhead could be
heard, while up aloft every chimney in Amersfort seemed to shriek aloud
in a different key. Maisie had gone down an hour ago and barred the
outer door with a stout oaken bolt, hasping the crossbar into its place
as an additional precaution. She would sit up, she said, till William
returned from duty, and then she would be sure to hear him approach.
On a still night she could distinguish his footsteps turning out of
the wide spaces of the Dam into the echoing narrows of the street of
Zaandpoort.
She and Kate sat between the newly lighted lamp and the fire of wood
which Maisie had insisted on making in order to keep out the gusty
chills of the night. A cosier little upper-room there was not to be
found in all Amersfort.
But there had fallen a long silence between the two. Maisie, as usual,
was thinking of William. It troubled her that her husband had that
day gone abroad without his blue military overcoat, and she declared
over and over that he would certainly come home wet from head to foot.
Kate's needle paused, lagged, and finally stopped altogether. Her
dark eyes gazed long and steadily into the fire. She saw a black and
gloomy prison-cell with the wind shrieking into the glassless windows.
She heard it come whistling and hooting through the bars as though
they were infernal harp-strings. And she thought, at once bitterly and
tenderly, of one who might be even then lying upon the floor without
either cloak or covering.
A sharp, hard sob broke into Maisie's pleasant revery. She went quickly
over to the girl, and sat down beside her.
"Be patient, Kate," she said; "it will all come right if you bide a
little. They cannot kill him, for none of the men who were wounded are
dead--though for their own purposes his enemies have tried to make the
prince believe so."
Kate lifted her head and looked piteously at Maisie.
"But even if he comes from prison, he will never forgive me. It was my
fault--my fault," she said, and let her head fall again on Maisie's
shoulder.
"Nay," said Maisie; "but I will go to him and own to him that the fault
was mine--tell him that he was not gone a moment before I was sorry and
ran after him to bring him back. He may be angry with me if he likes;
but, at least, he shall understand that you were free from blame."
But this consolation, perhaps because it was now repeated for the
fiftieth time, somehow failed to bring relief to Kate's troubled heart.
"He will never come back, I know," she said; "for I sent him away! Oh,
how I wish I had not sent him away! Why--why did you let me?"
Maisie's mouth dropped to a pathetic pout of despair. It was so much
easier comforting a man, she thought, than a girl. Now, if it had been
William--
But at that moment a loud and continuous knocking was heard at the
outer door, which had been so carefully barred against the storm.
"It is my dear!" cried Maisie, jumping eagerly to her feet, "and I had
not heard his footstep turn into the street."
And she looked reproachfully at Kate, as though in this instance she
had been entirely to blame.
"It is the first time that I ever missed hearing that," she said, and
ran quickly down the stairs. As she threw open the fastenings a noisy
gust of wind rioted in, and slammed all the doors with claps like
thunder.
"William!" she cried, "dear lad, forgive me; I could not hear your foot
for the noise of the wind, though I was listening. Believe me that--"
But it was the face of an unknown man which confronted her. He was clad
in a blue military mantle, under which a uniform was indistinctly seen.
"Your pardon, madam," he said, looking down upon her, "are you not
Mistress Gordon, the wife of Captain William Gordon, of the regiment of
the Covenant?"
"I am indeed his wife," said Maisie, with just pride; "what of him?"
"I am bidden to say that he urgently requires your presence at the
guard-house."
Maisie felt all the warm blood ebb from about her heart. But she only
bit her lip, and set her hand hard over her breast.
"He is ill--he is dead!" she panted, scarcely knowing what she said.
"Nay," said the man, "not ill, and not dead. But he sends you word that
he needs you urgently."
"You swear to me that he is not dead?" she said, seizing him fiercely
by the wet cuff of his coat. For the man had laid his hand upon the
edge of the wind-blown door to keep it steady as he talked, or perhaps
in fear lest it should be shut in his face before his errand was
accomplished.
Without waiting for another word besides the man's reiterated
assurance, Maisie fled up-stairs, and telling Kate briefly that her
husband needed her and had sent for her to the guard-room, she thrust a
sheathed dagger into her bosom, and ran back down to the outer door.
"Bide a moment, and I will come with you!" cried Kate, after her.
"No, no," answered Maisie, "stay you and keep the house. I shall not be
long away. Keep the water hot against William's return."
So saying, she shut the outer door carefully behind her, and hurried
into the night.
Maisie had expected that the man who had brought the message would
be waiting to guide her, but he had vanished. The long street of
Zaandpoort was bare and dark from end to end, lit only by the lights
within the storm-beaten houses where the douce burghers of Amersfort
were sitting at supper or warming their toes at an early and unwonted
fire.
Then for the first time it occurred to Maisie that she did not know
whether her husband would be found at the guard-house of the palace, or
at that by the city port, where was the main entrance to the camp. She
decided to try the palace first.
With throbbing heart the young wife ran along the rain-swept streets.
She had thrown her husband's cloak over her arm as she came out, with
the idea of making him put it on when she found him. But she was glad
enough, before she had ventured a hundred paces into the dark, roaring
night, to drawn it closely over her own head and wrap herself from head
to foot in it.
As she turned out upon the wide spaces of the Dam of Amersfort, into
which Zaandpoort Street opened, she almost ran into the arms of the
watch. An officer, who went first with a lantern, stopped her.
"Whither away so fast and so late, maiden?" he said; "an thou give not
a fitting answer we must have thee to the spinning-house."
"I am the wife of a Scottish officer," said Maisie, nothing daunted.
"And he being, as I think, taken suddenly ill, has sent for me by a
messenger, whom in the darkness I have missed."
"Your husband's name and regiment?" demanded the leader of the watch,
abruptly, yet not unkindly.
"He is called William Gordon," she said, "and commands to-night at the
guard-house. He is a captain in the Scots regiment, called that of the
Covenant."
The officer turned to his band.
"What regiments are on guard to-night?"
"The Scots psalm-singers at the palace--Van Marck's Frisians at the
port of the camp," said a voice out of the dark. "And if it please you,
I know the lady. She is a main brave one, and her husband is a good
man. He carried the banner at Ayrsmoss, a battle in Scotland where many
were slain, and after which he was the only man of the hill folk left
alive."
"Go with her, thou, then," commanded the officer, "and bring her in
safety to her husband. It is not fitting, madam, that you should be
on the streets of the city at midnight and alone. Good-night and good
speed to you, lady. Men of the city guard, forward!"
And with that the watch swung briskly up the street, the light of their
leader's lantern flashing this way and that across the darkling road,
as it dangled in his hand or was swayed by the fitful wind.
It seemed but a few minutes before Maisie's companion was challenging
the soldiers of the guard at the palace.
"Captain William Gordon? Yea, he bides within," said a stern-visaged
sergeant, in the gusty outer port. "Who might want him at this time of
night?"
"His wife," said the soldier of the watch, indicating Maisie with his
hand.
The sergeant bent his brows, as if he thought within him that this was
neither hour nor place for the domesticities. Nevertheless, he opened
an inner door, saluted upon the threshold, spoke a few words, and
waited.
Will Gordon himself came out almost instantly in full uniform. One
cheek was somewhat ruddy with sitting before the great fire, which cast
pleasant gleams through the doorway into the outer hall of the guard.
"Why, Maisie!" he cried, "what do you here, lassie?"
He spoke in the kindly Scots of their Galloway Hills.
Maisie started back in apprehensive astonishment.
"Did you not send for me, William? A messenger brought me word an hour
ago, or it may be less, that you needed me most urgently. I thought you
had been sick, or wounded, at the least. So I spared not, but hasted
hither alone, running all the way. But I came on the watch, and the
officer sent this good man with me."
Will Gordon laughed.
"Some one hath been playing April-fool overly late in the day. If I
catch him I will swinge him tightly therefor. He might have put thee in
great peril, little one."
"I had a dagger, William," said Maisie, determinedly, putting her hand
on her breast; "and had I a mind I could speak bad words also, if any
had dared to meddle with me."
"Well, in a trice I shall be relieved," he said. "Come in by the fire.
'Tis not exactly according to the general's regulations. But I will
risk the prince coming on such a night--or what would be worse, Mr.
Michael Shields, who is our regimental chaplain and preceptor-general
in righteousness."
Presently they issued forth, Maisie and her husband walking close
together. His arm was about her, and the one blue military cloak proved
great enough for two. They walked along, talking right merrily, to the
street of Zaandpoort. At the foot of the stair they stopped with a gasp
of astonishment. The door stood open to the wall.
"It hath been blown open by the wind," said Will Gordon.
They went up-stairs, Maisie first, and her husband standing a moment to
shake the drops of rain from the cloak.
"Kate, Kate, where are you?" cried Maisie, as she reached the
landing-place a little out of breath, as at this time was her wont.
But she recoiled from what she saw in the sitting-room. The lamp
burned calmly and steadily upon its ledge. But the chairs were mostly
overturned. The curtain was torn down, and flapped in the gusts through
the window, which stood open towards the canal. Kate's Bible lay
fluttering its leaves on the tiles of the fireplace. The floor was
stained with the mud of many confused footmarks. A scrap of lace from
Kate's sleeve hung on a nail by the window. But in all the rooms of
the house in the street of Zaandpoort there was no sign of the girl
herself. She had completely vanished.
Pale to the lips, and scarce knowing what they did, Will Gordon and his
wife sat down at opposite sides of the table, and stared blankly at
each other without speech or understanding.