JACK SCARLETT CALLS HIMSELF A FOOL
Wat and his companion passed along the deserted streets of Amersfort,
keeping carefully to those which were darkest and least frequented.
For a space neither spoke. But as they were crossing a wide, deserted
square, the Little Marie broke the silence with a startling speech.
"I think by this time he will be dead," she said, simply, as though she
had said that it rained.
"Think _who_ will be dead?" queried Wat, stopping instantly and facing
her.
"Why, your enemy!" replied the Little Marie, calmly; "but let us go on
lest the watch should come by and stop us."
"My enemy!" exclaimed Walter, putting his hand to his brow like one
bewildered.
"Aye," said Marie, "the man you showed me and told me was your
enemy--the dark man called Barra, the provost-marshal. I, the Little
Marie, struck him in the side with a knife as he was mounting his horse
to ride away--methinks I know whither. At any rate, it was on an evil
quest. He rides on no others. Did I not tell you that he was my enemy
before he was yours?"
"Struck my Lord Barra--with a knife, Marie?" stammered Wat. His slow
Northern blood had not dreamed of such swift vengeance.
"Aye," said the girl, anxiously; "did I not do right? He was mine
enemy, true. He it was who first brought me hither, left me friendless
in this city of Satan, made me that which men think me. But had that
been all his fault he might have lived. After all, that sin was mine as
well as his. I struck him because he was your enemy, and because you
hated him. Did I not well?"
"Marie," said Wat, very soberly, "you and I are as good as dead for
this. Did any see you strike?"
"Aye, marry, there were," she replied, carelessly; "but I was well
wrapped about in a red cloak and wore the cap and ear-plates of a
peasant woman of Frisia. There were several that stood curiously about
as I went near to hand him my petition at his own door. But what with
the night, the reeling of the torches, and the instant confusion, none
put out a hand to stay me as I went away. And I think he will surely be
dead by this!"
She spoke the words dispassionately, like one who has done an
unpleasing duty and has no further concern nor stake in the matter.
Instinctively their feet had turned into the street of Zaandpoort.
Wat's heart suddenly leaped within him. He had come to see the house
where he had been happy for a few hours. He would look just once
upon the window whence his love had often looked forth, and at that
other within which her dear head would even now be lying, shedding
soft dishevelled curls distractingly over the pillow--ah! the
heart-sickness! To think that never should he see it thus, never now
lay his own close beside it, as in wild visions of the night he had
often dreamed of doing.
But there shone a light from the living-room of Will Gordon's lodging.
Shadows moved restlessly across the blind. The house in Zaandpoort
Street was still awake and stirring.
Wat took a sudden resolution. He would risk all, and for the last time
look upon the woman he adored, even though he knew she loved him not.
"Hide here a moment, Marie," Wat said to his companion; "over there in
the dark of the archway. This is the house of my cousin, a soldier from
my own country of Scotland. I would bid him farewell before I go."
The young girl looked wistfully at him, and laid her hand quickly on
her heart.
"Ah, it is the house of your love--I know it," she said, sadly and
reproachfully; "and you have said so often that none loved you--that
none cared for you."
Wat smiled the pale ghost of a smile, unseen in the darkness of the
night.
"It is true that once on a time I loved one dwelling in this house. But
she loved me not--"
"It is impossible," moaned Marie. "I know that she must have loved
you--"
"No, she loved me not," answered Wat; "but, as I think, she loved the
man whom you--"
Wat stepped back into shadow, and Marie clutched his cloak with a
nervous hand. It was Will Gordon who came down the stairs. Haggered,
unshaven, looking straight before him with set eyes, he was not the
same man who had come so cosily back from the guard-room of the palace
the night before with his wife upon his arm.
Wat advanced a pace out of the dark of the arch. He held out his hand.
"Will," he said, "with you I quarrelled not. And I think that if your
wife, who used to be so stanchly my friend, knew my broken heart, she,
too, would forgive my hasty words, and be ready to understand evil
appearances that were no more than appearances."
But Will Gordon did not take the outstretched hand which Wat held a
moment in the air and then dropped sadly to his side.
"Tell me first," he said, "where you have hidden our Kate, and what
you have to do with the killing of my Lord of Barra? After that I will
either take your hand or set my sword in your heart."
"Will Gordon!" cried Wat, starting back, "was it for this that we two
kept Wellwood's men at bay under the arch at Holyrood? For this that we
lay shoulder to shoulder on the chill moors, that in these latter days
you should charge me with crimes of which I know nothing? Hidden Kate?
Why, is not Kate here, behind the glass of that window? Does she not
sleep soundly, recking nothing of evil or the sorrow of others, upon
her bed? Is not her maiden heart as ever free and careless--"
"Wat, I believe you, lad," said Will; "it was a hasty and ill-conceived
thought of mine. I know you love us all overmuch to bring harm to our
lassie. But, certainly, Kate is lost--has been carried off--and now
they are seeking her everywhere, charging her, forsooth, with the
slaying of my Lord Barra."
At the last words Wat laughed a little scornful laugh.
He had not yet taken in the terrible import of the news concerning
Kate's loss. But it seemed a foolishly monstrous thing that even in
jest she should be charged with the death of Barra, while not ten yards
behind him, in the dark of the arched doorway, stood the Little Marie,
with her dagger scarcely dry in her garter.
Then, after a moment, Will's first words suddenly came back to him, as
if they had been echoed from the tall buildings which stood about them.
"You do not mean it--Kate gone?" he said, dully, and without
comprehension; "it is impossible. Who so wicked in all this land as to
have done the thing?"
Then Will told him all the tale of the false message and of their
home-coming.
"It is Barra's trick--what other?" Wat said, at once; "I saw that he
loved her--if such a poisonous reptile can love. But I thought not that
even he could devise her wrong, else had I slain him on the spot."
Wat meditated a little while in silence. "Did Kate tell you if he had
spoken aught to her of love?"
"He offered her the most honorable marriage, and yet greater things
when the prince should come to his own. But she would have none of
him," replied Will Gordon.
"It is enough," cried Wat. "Certainly this is an affair of my lord's.
Dead or alive, I will trace out his plots till I find his trail. It may
be, after all, but a matter of Haxo the Bull, his Calf, and his Killer.
Give me no more than a sword and pistols, and my belt with the gold
that is in your strong-box."
"Will you not come up with me, Wat?" said Will Gordon. "Come, cousin."
"Nay," said Wat, "there is not time. It is but now that I have escaped
from their prison. In an hour there will be the hue-and-cry, and then
they will surely search your house. I must be far on the sea-road by
daybreak. Only furnish me with necessities, cousin mine, and let me
go. My humblest service to your wife--but tell her not till after I am
gone!"
Will Gordon went back up the stairs. Presently he was down again
with the weapons, with enough and to spare of ammunition, a loaf of
wheaten bread, a flask of wine, and the broad leathern belt with the
gold-pieces, which slipped down like a weighty serpent as he laid it in
Wat's hands. The money had been kept sacred for just such an emergency.
The cousins bade each other a kindly adieu in the fashion of other and
happier times, and then Will Gordon returned sadly to his wife.
Wat stepped back to the shelter where he had left Marie, but she was
not to be seen. He looked every way and called softly; but the girl had
vanished.
"It is perhaps as well!" he said, the Scot's prudence within him
warring with his gratitude towards the girl who had twice risked her
life for him without thought of reward.
He took his way alone across the broad squares and over the canals
to Jack Scarlett's lodgings. There was a light in the window as he
approached. He knocked gently, and a gruff voice ordered him to come
in, or else (as an equally satisfactory alternative) to proceed
incontinently to quite other regions.
Wat entered, and there, seated upon the side of his bed, he found
Scarlett with one boot off and the other still upon his foot. His eyes
were set in his head, and a kindly, idiotic smile was frozen on his
face.
At the sight of Wat, pale as death, with his clothes frayed and
disarranged with his long sojourn in prison, Scarlett started up. With
a vigorous wave of his hand he motioned his visitor away.
"Avaunt! as the clerks say. Get away, briskly, or I will say the Lord's
Prayer at thee (that's if I can remember it). Come not near a living
man. Wat Gordon in the flesh with a long sword was bad enough; but Wat
Gordon dead, with an unshaven chin and clothed out of a rag-shop, is
a thousand times worse. Alas, that it should come so soon to this! I
am shamed to be such a shaveling in my cups! Yet of a truth I drank
only seven bottles and a part of an eighth. This comes of being a poor
orphan, and being compelled to drink the most evil liquor of this
unfriendly country!"
"Scarlett," said Wat, seriously, "listen to me. I am going on a long
quest. Will you come with me? I need a companion now as a man never
needed comrade before! Mine enemy has stolen my love, and I go to find
her!"
"Away--get away!" cried Scarlett. "I want not to die yet awhile. I
desire time to repent--that is, when I grow old enough to repent. There
is Sergeant Hilliard over there at the end of the passage," he went on,
eagerly, as if a famous idea had struck him, "his hair is gray, if you
like, and he has a most confounded gout. He will gladly accompany you.
Be advised, kind ghost. Have the goodness to cross the stairway to
Hilliard. Remember, I was ever thy friend in life, Wat Gordon!"
"Beshrew your tipsy, idiot soul," thundered Wat, rising in a towering
passion; "have you drunk so much that you know not a living man from
one dead and damned? I will teach thee the difference, and that
sharply."
And with that he went over to the bedside, and banged Scarlett's head
soundly against the rafters of the garret, exclaiming at every thump
and crash, "I pray you, Jack Scarlett, say when you are convinced that
Wat Gordon is flesh and blood, and not an airy ghost."
It did not take much of this most potent logic to persuade the
ghost-seer that he had to do with Wat Gordon in his own proper and
extremely able-bodied person.
"Enough!" he cried; "hold your hands, Wat. Could you not have said as
much at first, and not stood gaping there like a week-old corpse done
up in a winding-sheet?"
"Thou donnert ass!" cried Wat. "Will you come with me on my quest, or
will you bide on here in Amersfort among putty-souled huxters teaching
shambling recruits how to stand upon their legs?"
"Of a truth, Buchan's knaves are indeed most hopeless. Yet whither can
I go? I know not of a better service," said Scarlett, shaking his head
doubtfully.
"But the adventure, man," cried Wat; "think of the adventure over seas,
through continents, upon far islands, all in quest of a true lass that
hath been trapped by devils, and may be treated most uncivilly. It
makes me mad!"
"All these are most extremely well for you, Wat Gordon of Lochinvar.
You are a younger man, and these bones of mine like well to lie on a
soft bed at my age. Also, and chiefly, the lass is your lass, and not
mine. Were you to find her to-morrow, what should I get out of all the
errant jackassery in the world?"
"John Scarlett," cried Wat, nodding his head, solemnly, "thy heart
is grown no better than a chunk of fat lard. There is no spirit in
thee any more. Go, turn over on thy side and snore, till it be time
to go forth once more to drill thy rotten sheep's regiment. God kens,
'tis all you are good for now, to be bell-wether to such a shuffling,
clod-hopping crew. 'Keep your head up! Fall not over your musket! Prod
up that man in the rear! I pray you do not hold your gun as if it were
a dandling baby! March!' Pshaw! John Scarlett, is that the life for a
man or for a puddle-rolling pig of the stye?"
Scarlett appeared to consider. He looked at the nails in the sole of
his boot with an air of grave deliberation, as if they could help him
to a decision.
"'Tis true, in truth most truly true," he said, "it is a dog's life.
But, after all, there is ever the chance of war."
"War? And will not I give thee wars to fill thy belly, and leave
something over for stuffing to thy calves?" cried Wat. "Why, man, thy
sword will never be in its sheath--fighting, seeking, spying, we will
overpass land and sea, hiding by heather and hill, creeping down by the
bonny burnside to win our speckled breakfasts out of the pools--"
"Tush, man," answered Scarlett, pettishly, "for all you know, your Kate
may be shut up in the next street. And besides, as I said, after all,
she is your lass, not mine."
Wat stepped back with a fine gesture of renunciation.
"Well," he said, "has it come to this? Never did I think to see the
day when Jack Scarlett--old Jack Scarlett of the wrist-of-steel--would
turn sheep and be afraid to set his shoulder to Wat Gordon's, or even
to cross blades with him, as he did the other night in the Inn of
Brederode. But old Jack has become no better than a gross, rotten,
grease-lined crock, and--Lord, Lord, such a flock as he leads on parade
after him!"
"S'blood! I will e'en break thy head, Wat, an' thou cease not thy
cackle. Now I will come with thee just to prove I am no sheep. No,
nor craven either. But only the greatest and completest old fool that
ever held a commission from a brave prince and one of the few good
paymasters in Europe."
With this Jack Scarlett rose, and did upon him his cloak and all his
fighting-gear with an air grave and sullen, as though he were going to
his own beheading. Then he searched all his drawers and pockets for
money--which, in spite of the vaunted excellence of the paymaster's
department, appeared to be somewhat scarce with the master-at-arms.
Presently he announced himself as ready.
His decision took this shape:
"This is the excellentest fool's-errand in the world, and I the greater
fool to go with another fool upon it. Lead on, Wat Gordon."
So, grumbling and muttering, he followed Wat down the stairs.
"And now," said Scarlett, "pray, have you so much as thought upon our
need of horses?"
"Nay," said Wat, "I have thought of naught but getting out of prison,
finding a friend, and winning back my lass."
"Aye, marry," grunted Scarlett, "thy lass! Mickle hast thou thought
of taking thy fool comrade away from the best pay-roll and the most
complaisant landlady he has found these thirty years."