BESS LANDSBOROUGH'S CATECHISM
As he went his unshod feet sometimes rasped on the sharp edges of
slaty rocks, and anon trod with a pleasantly tickling sensation on
the shaggy bull's-fell of the inland heather. Wat drew his breath
instinctively shorter and more anxiously, not so much from any
increased consciousness of danger as because he knew that at last he
trod the isle whereon his love lay asleep, all unconscious of his
living presence so near her.
Climbing steadily, he surmounted the steep slope, and came to the angle
of the castle wall. Here Wat peered stealthily round. A fire of peat,
nearly extinct, smoked sulkily in front of an arched doorway which led
underneath the masonry, and stretched out with his bare feet towards
it, and barring all passage into the vault, lay a gigantic Highlander
with a naked claymore by his side. It was Alister McAlister on guard
over his prisoner.
Wat drew back. "Surely," he thought, "it cannot be in this morose
dungeon that they have shut my love?"
At the thought he grasped the dagger which was his sole weapon, and
glanced at the prostrate form of the unconscious sentinel, with the
tangled locks thrown back from the broad brow.
"Never yet did Wat Gordon slay a sleeping man," he muttered, somewhat
irresolutely, and took a backward step to consider the matter. But at
that instant a thick plaid was thrown over his head and he was pulled
violently to the ground. Limber Wat twisted like an eel and struck at
his assailant with his dagger. But a hand clasped his arm and a voice
whispered in his ear, "Down with your blade, man. I am a friend. If ye
love Kate McGhie, you endanger both her life and yours by the least
noise."
The plaid was unwound from about his head, and in the dim light Wat
could see that he stood beside the door of a cabin, so low as hardly
to be distinguishable from the bowlders upon the moor, being as
shapelessly primitive and turf-overgrown as they. Beside him crouched a
woman of middle age, apparently tall and well-featured.
"Wheest, laddie," she whispered, "hae ye the heart o' gowd that the
lassie left for ye wi' that daft hempie, Mehitabel Smith?"
Wat slipped the love-token from under his shirt and let the woman touch
it. It was chill and damp with the crossing of the salt strait.
"Aye, lad, surely ye are the true lover, and Bess Landsborough is no'
the woman to wrang ye," said the wife of Alister. "But mind ye, there
are mony dangers yet to encounter. Your friend that was casten oot o'
your bit boatie among the Bores o' the Suck is safe-warded yonder in
the tower, and that is my man Alister that ye swithered whether to put
your gully-knife intil or no."
Wat hastened to disclaim any such fell intent.
[Illustration: "A GIGANTIC HIGHLANDER WITH A NAKED CLAYMORE BY HIS
SIDE"]
"Wi' laddie, was I no watchin' ye?" said the woman, "and did I no see
the thocht in the verra crook o' your elbow? Bess Landsborough has
companied ower lang wi' men o' war no' to ken when they are playin'
themselves, and when the death o' the heart rins like wildfire alang
the shoother blade, doon the strong airm, and oot at the place where
the fingers fasten themselves round the blue steel. Sma' blame till ye!
But lest ye should be ower greatly tempted, I e'en threw the plaidie
ower ye to gie ye time to consider better. For, after a', Alister's
my ain man, and a kind man to me. And forbye, stickin' a knife atween
puir Alister's ribs wad no hae advantaged you a hair, nor yet helped
ye to your bit lass--no, nor even assisted that ill-set skelum Jock
Scarlett to win clear oot o' his prison hole."
The woman took Wat by the hand.
"Come this side the hoose," she said; "I want a word wi' you. Bess
Landsborough is takin' some risks the nicht, and she maun ken what
mainner o' lad she is pittin' her windpipe in danger for."
She drew him round the low, turf-roofed house to the end farthest from
the castle. Here stood a peat stack, or rather a mound of the large
surface "turves" of the country, for there are no true peat-mosses upon
Suliscanna.
Alister's wife crouched upon her heels in the black shelter of the
stack, and drew Wat down beside her.
"Now," she said, "what brocht ye here this night, and where did ye come
frae?"
"I came seeking Kate McGhie, the lass that I have followed over a
thousand miles of land and sea," answered Wat, promptly, "and also to
discover what had become of my friend whose name you have mentioned,
John Scarlett, he who was with me when our boat overset near the
island."
"To seek your lass and your friend, says you," answered the woman, "a
good answer and a fair; but whilk o' them the maist? Ye are cauld and
wat. Ye will hae soomed frae some hidie-hole in the muckle cliffs they
name Lianacraig, I doot na. Was it your lass or your friend that ye
thocht on when ye took life in hand and cam' paddling like a pellock
through the mirk? Was it for the sake o' your love or your comrade
that ye were gangin' to slit the hass of Alister McAlister, decent
red-headed son o' a cattle-thief that he is?"
"For both of them," said Wat, stoutly; "I am much beholden to John
Scarlett. He set out on this most perilous adventure over seas at
a word from me, and without the smallest prospect of advantage to
himself."
"I doubt it not," said Bess Landsborough; "it was the little sense
o' the cuif all the days of him, that he would ever do more for his
comrade than for his lass. And that is maybe the reason annexed to Bess
Landsborough's being here this day, a Heelantman's wife on the cauld,
plashy isle o' Suliscanna. But, laddie, listen to me. I am no gaun to
let the bonny bit young thing that I hae cherished like my ain dochter
mak' the same mistake as I made langsyne. Tell me, laddie, as God sees
ye, what yin ye wad leave ahint ye, gin ye could tak' but yin o' them
and ye kenned that death wad befall the ither?"
"I would take Kate McGhie, though ye hanged old Jack Scarlett as high
as Haman," quoth Wat, instantly.
"Fairly and soothly, my man," said the woman, in his ear. "There is
no need to rair it as if ye were at a field-preachin' on the wilds of
Friarminion. Quietly, quietly; tell me, in brief, what ye wad do for
your friend and what for your lass?"
"For my friend I will tell you," said Wat--"though I know not what
gives you the right to ask--for my friend I would do all that a man
may--face my friend's foes, help his well-wishers till I had not a rag
to share, stand shoulder to shoulder with him, and never ask the cause
of his quarrel; share the crust and divide the stoup, die and be buried
in one hole with him at the last."
"Aye," said Bess, "that is spoken like a soldier, and well spoken, too.
Ye mean it, lad, and ye wad do it, too. But for your lass--"
"For her," said Wat, lowering his voice, solemnly, "for the lass I
love, is it? I will rather tell you what I have done already. For
her I have gone mad. I have flung my chances by handfuls into the
sea. At sight of a single scornful glint of her eye I ran headlong to
destruction; at a harsh word from her I had almost thrown away life
and honor both. For a kindly word I have set my head in the dust under
her foot. I have cherished in my deepest heart no pride, no will, no
ambition that I would not have made a stepping-stone of, that her foot
might tread upon it."
Wat paused for breath amid the rush of his words ere he went on:
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more,'
somewhat thus runs the catch. But the man that made that kenned
nothing of love. For I would make all the honor of men no more than a
straw-wisp to feed the flames to warm the feet of my love withal. To
'die for her' is a pretty saying, and forever in the mouth of every
prating fool whenever he comes anigh a woman; but I would smile under
the torture of the boot and abide silently the Extreme Question only to
preserve her heart from a single pang."
"Would you give her up to another if you knew that it was for her good?"
"A thousand times no!" Wat was beginning, furiously, when his companion
put her hand over his mouth.
"If ye dinna hunker doon beside me, and learn to be still, ye will
e'en see her ye think so muckle o' the bride o' my Lord o' Barra, and
that, too, on the morn of a day when ye will be learning to dance a new
quick-step oot o' the tower window up on the heuch there."
"I know," said Wat, speaking more low, and answering as if to himself
her former question, "that it is within the power of the love of woman,
when it is purest and noblest, to be able to give up that which they
love to another, if they judge that it is for the beloved's good. But
they that think such surrender to be the essence of the highest love
of men ken nothing at all about the matter. For me, I would a thousand
times rather clasp my love in my arms and leap with her over the crags
of Lianacraig, than see her given to any other. And I would sooner set
the knife into her sweet throat with mine own hand than that Barra
should so much as lay a finger upon her."
"And your friend?" said Bess Landsborough. She was smiling in the dark
as if she were well pleased.
"Jack Scarlett I love," replied Wat, "but not for him did I break
prison, overpass the hollow seas, and lay my life like a very little
thing in the palm of a maiden's hand."
"It is well," said Bess Landsborough, with a sigh. "That is the true
lilt of the only love that is worth the having. The heart beats just so
when there comes into it the love that contents a woman--the love that
is given to but few to find in this weariful, unfriendly, self-seeking
warld."
She rose to her feet and looked eastward.
"In an hour and a half at the outside ye maun be on your road, lad,
back to your hidie-hole. I ask ye not where that may be. But gin
Alister McAlister sleeps soundly ye shall speak with your friend--while
I, Bess Landsborough, a decent married woman frae the pairish o'
Colmonel, keep watch and ward at the chaumer door ower the pair o' ye."
She took him again by the hand, laid her finger a moment soberly on his
lip, and then led him about the house to a low door, through which she
entered and drew Wat Gordon after her, bowing his head almost to the
level of his waist in the act of following his guide.
Wat was rejoiced to know that he was about to see Jack Scarlett, both
because he had thought him dead in the tide-race, and also that
together they might devise some plan of escape for themselves and for
the delivery of Kate from her durance. At an inner door his guide
halted and listened long and earnestly. The chamber in which they stood
was dark save for the red ashes of a turf fire in the centre. Bess
Landsborough tapped lightly on the inner door and opened it quietly.
Then she took Wat by the shoulder and pushed him in.
"Ye said your 'Carritches'[B] to me, and ye said them weel, or, my
faith, 'tis not here ye should have found yoursel' this nicht! Gang in
there, lad, and say the 'Proofs' and the 'Reasons Annexed.'"
[B] Catechism.
Wat, greatly puzzled, stepped within. He found himself in a small room,
dark save when the dying fire of peat in the outer chamber threw red
glimmers into it.
"Jack--Jack Scarlett!" whispered Wat, astonished that the old soldier
did not greet him.
"He must be very sound asleep!" he thought.