'Hoots,' she said, 'see what else I have brought you.'
And with that she took from her pocket all the apparatus of cleaning my
pieces and sword, besides the links and buckles of Dom Nicholas's
harness and equipment, the sight of which put me in a fever to see him
again. Never was anything kindlier done. Also, she brought me from her
father's scanty library such books as she thought I might care to read;
though, indeed, I read but little, never having been greatly given to
lear--save, as it might be, books of songs, troll-catches, wits'
recreations and such like.
But amongst others she brought me a French manual of fence, which gave
me infinite pleasure. For with her help I could spell out the
instructions, and the plates of positions I was fain to imitate with my
two rapiers, till I had hacked and scarred all the four posts of the bed
most grievously. And Mistress Allison declared that it was not safe for
anyone to come within the outer door.
But one day my bed-fast practice-at-arms stood mine hostess in good
stead, for which afterwards she gave me full thankfulness. It chanced
on a certain noontide of heat that all were at the hayfield. Even Kate
and Nell had gone to toss the hay, which is a pleasant thing to do in
good company, but, i' faith, ill enough to think on as I lay tossing my
weary body, and cursing the luck that tied me here in a dull room--vexed
with heat, the weight of bedclothing, and the broad buzzing flies which
would light on the corner of one's nose, each time that sleep was on the
verge of flapping down silently with his black wings to bring a welcome
shortening of the weary hours. Mistress Allison stole about the kitchen
on bare, broad feet, flapping and slapping the flags with them as she
carried her cakes to the girdle plate, or swung it from the cleek above
the clear baking fire of brown peats. She thought me asleep, for I had
cleaned all my arms till I could see myself sitting up in bed, with my
pale face and towsed haystack of a head, in every square inch of them.
Kate had brought me that day a book called _The Whole Duty of Pilgrims_,
but finding it full of religious reflections and not tales of the
Crusaders as I had hoped, I laid it aside for the Sabbath day, as being
more reverent and fitting.
All at once the outer door of the Grieve's house was thrown back on its
hinges, and a great sturdy caird entered--mayhap an Egyptian sorner, or
bold robber, such as were vexing the realm at the time, or perhaps only
a common muddy rascal of the road.
'Mistress, I bid you good-day,' he said. 'I am hungry and would have
meat!'
Plain and quite short he said it--even as I have written it down.
'In this Grieve's house of Culzean even gentry folk say "An it please
you," and "By your leave!"' replied, with some indignation, the mistress
of the dwelling.
'But then I will e'en help myself, without please or leave either,'
cried the villain. And with that he opened a leathern wallet that he
had slung over his shoulder, and began to thrust therein, not only the
scones, but anything about the dresser and tables that his thievish
fancy lit upon.
'Now, mistress,' said he; 'let me have any siller you have in the house,
and a well-pleased kiss of your weel-faured moo' therewith, or else I
must do my needs with you!'
And with that he opened a great gully knife, as though he would run at
her. Mistress Allison cried out with a strange cry of woman's fear,
which I who had been in battle never heard the like of before. Just at
this moment I pushed the bedroom door open with the point of my toe, and
sat there looking straight at the man, with a pistol bended in each
hand, and both of them trained point blank on the rascal's heart.
I make bold to say that in all this realm of Scotland there was not any
man so exceedingly astonished as this particular sturdy thief at that
moment.
'Drop the knife, sirrah!' I commanded, as one that cries his orders in a
battle.
And the knife rang obediently on the stone floor.
'Kick it into the corner with your foot-- No, not with your hand.'
And reluctantly he kicked the knife away from him.
'Now, my excellent good man,' said I, 'sit you down and put your hands
behind you. There and thus, be still where you are, quite in the middle
of the floor and not elsewhere.'
So he sat him down, and, keeping my pistols dead upon him, I bade
Mistress Allison tie his hands firmly with cord, and give him a settle
to lean against. Thereafter I comforted him with stern philosophy.
I told him of his wandering and uncertain life. I showed him
conclusively how that he went ever in danger of the hangman's whip, and
that at the end there could only be awaiting for him a shameful death.
I told him also that our overlord of Culzean had the power of pit and
gallows, and that, on the return of the haymakers, he should be brought
out--when in an hour there would be an end of all his misery upon the
dule-tree, or tree of execution, which stands by the great gate and
bears medlars at any season, but only for an hour at a time.
''Tis the most cruel and unjust treatment of poor, beset, far wandering
men!' said the man on the floor. They were the first words he had
spoken since he threw down his knife. I wondered he could speak so well.
'We have heard no complaints, so far,' I made answer, drily, for the
man's former insolence stuck in my throat. And in especial the thought
of what might have happened to mine hostess or the maids, had I not been
there upon the bed with my weapons beside me. So I kept him in torment
of mind for a space.
At last, as the afternoon ebbed away, and the hour of sundown and
homecoming wore on, his anxiety waxed pitiful. He turned and twisted to
free his hands, so that the only way I could quiet him was to lift a
pistol and point it at him. But even that did not appear to soothe him
for any length of time.
At last he raised his head.
'Master,' said he, sullenly, but speaking not that ill, 'ye have me, I
grant, in the cleaving of a stick. Now I will tell you a thing you
greatly desire to know. Will ye promise to let me go, and I will never
meddle you more?'
'I do not mean that you should,' said I, 'nevertheless, what is the
thing that you can tell me? And when I know, I shall judge its
worth--on the honour of a gentleman.'
'I can tell you,' said he, 'where you will find the treasure of
Kelwood!'
'What bald-crowned blethers!' I cried scornfully. 'Pray, how am I to
know that you speak the truth? Ye may tell me that it is with the gold
cup, at the end of the rainbow!'
'It is true,' said the man, 'I might lie to you; but I will not, for I
need my life. It is sweet to me as yours to you.'
'How can such a life be sweet?' I asked, daffing with the man in my
power--which was 'bad form,' as John Mure himself sayeth in his history
of the troubles.
'It is not a time to argue,' said he, 'but my life is as pleasant as the
trees that toss their branches, and as the free life of the forest.'
'Too free altogether,' said I, 'thus to come in and threaten the life
and honour of a decent woman. We must have such freedom trussed and
stretched on a tow rope.'
'I did but fright her,' said he, sullenly.
'That is as may be,' replied I, keeping my pistol trained for his left
eye-hole, 'and in any case it will be all the same in two hours.'
'But,' said he, 'hear me concerning the treasure of Kelwood. Ye have
conquest the key. I can tell you where the box itself is. For if I win
clear this time, I must escape over seas from the vengeance of the Grey
Man.'
'But you may lie even as you have stolen, and I fear me murdered also,
for by your talk you are one of a murderous set.'
'Of the lying you must e'en take your chance--even as, after telling
you, I must take my chance of your cutting my bonds and letting me go.'
'You have a gentleman's word,' I answered him.
'And how much is that worth in Carrick this day,' he said harshly and
bitterly, 'even with a bond to back it?'
'Mine,' said I, with what dignity I could muster, 'is worth as much as
truth itself'--which, I grant, was but a windy saying.
'I believe it, and I will trust it,' said he. 'The treasure of Kelwood
is in the cave of Sawny Bean, on the seashore of Bennanbrack, over
against the hill of Benerard.'
And not another word would he say.
So when Mistress Allison had locked herself in the milk-house, and
advised me that the haymakers were in full sight, I caused my man to
roll himself to the door of the bedroom. There with my sword I cut the
bonds.
'Now,' said I, 'take the door sharply, without so much as going to the
other side for your bundle or your knife, and then the woods are open to
you and the world wide.'
'I thank you, master,' he said civilly. 'When you go for the treasure,
I counsel you do not call on Sandy by your leasome lane.'
And with that caution he betook himself into the glades of the wood.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*MINE ANCIENT SWEETHEART*
After he was gone I cast about in my mind, and, for the life of me, I
could not decide whether the fellow had been lying to me or not. It was
indeed a thing to be wondered at, how this chance scoundrel should know
(what I had thought known only to my Lord of Cassillis and my master)
that after the fight in the barn I had carried away, clenched in my
hand, the key of the treasure chest of Kelwood.
Now, as was natural after this encounter, the goodwife of the Grieve's
house could not make enough of me. Indeed, if anything, she made too
much of me, for, instead of suffering her daughter and Nell to entertain
me as before, while she went about her work, she thought it her duty as
soon as one of them came in and sat down, to leave that which she was
about, and come and sit with us for company. Now Mistress Allison was a
good woman and agreeable of her tongue, but I did not feel the necessity
for this byordinar kindness.
Yet it was not easy to alter it. Then in the evenings came Robert
Harburgh to see me. At first he came once a week while my wounds kept
me weak and fretful. Then, as I grew better, he came twice. And when I
was able to sit up, it came about that he would arrive every night and
bide till bedtime--so that at last I was almost shamed to have him
sitting there, and feared that he might be burdensome to Kate Allison
and her mother.
For Robert Harburgh had but little to say, but he ever looked and proved
kindly. Also he brought me many things from Maybole and
elsewhere--oranges and wine that had been shipped to Irvine from foreign
parts, neckerchiefs also for Kate and her mother. A quiet, down-looking
fellow was Robert, something dull of the uptake, and with little to say
for himself; but a most noble sworder, and wholly without care for his
body when it came to the fighting.
Now it seems a strange thing that I, who had so long played the lover to
Kate Allison, should be laid by the heels in her father's house, hearing
the whip and frisk of her gown about the chambers all the day. And I
still loved to hear it, for she was a bonny lass--and kind, kind to me.
Also her eyes were pleasant, and had both mischief and tears in
them--not like Nell Kennedy's, that held only mischief and scorn--save
once, as it seemed to me, a little while when I was deadly fevered, and
when Dr Low of Ayr, the Earl of Cassillis's own physician, ordered me
herb-drinks, and shook his doting wiseacre's head over me like a most
melancholious billy-goat. Then for a little Nell's eyes were quiet and
sorrowful.
But it did not last. For by the time that I could get a scheme laid to
take advantage of the gleam of kindness, she was again but mine own
ill-set lassie-boy of a Nell, and we were throng at the sparring and
quarrelling just as usual. But, as I say, Kate Allison was wondrously
kind to me. Many a night when the weather was hot, and my wounds
paining me as though they would break again open, would she sit by me
with clear caller water from the spring, tirelessly changing the soft
linen cloths. And when the drops of fever-sweat stood on my brow, she
would touch them gently away, and lay her own cool cheek against my
forehead. Ay, and when I put my hand up and drew down her face, she
would kiss me right frankly upon the lips. Yet, as I judged, not quite
as of old. But I thought it might be the illness that made the
difference, for with being sick in body and feverish in mind, nothing
tastes the same. And so I thought it might be also with kisses.
But after I had grown stronger, I shall ever mind me of one night when I
got a horrid awakening. It was a quiet gloaming. Kate Allison and I
had the house to ourselves--to which, speaking for myself, I did not
wholly object. I lay stretched upon the long oaken settle, on cushions
which Nell Kennedy had brought from the great house. Kate sat beside me
on a stool and leaned an elbow on the oak's edge. She was unwontedly
silent, and sometimes I touched her cheek lightly with my hand. It was
a most pleasant night, and my mind was full of pity and consideration
for her. I bethought me that, though doubtless I could have looked
higher, I might do worse in time than think of settling down with a
sweet and pleasant lass like Kate Allison. It was also touching to me
that she should never have wavered from loving me, all the time that I
had been forgetting her and thinking of others. But that, I said to
myself, is the way of women.
We were silent a great while, with the silence that needs no speech, and
my heart had grown melting and kindly to the young lass, even as it had
been in old days. All of a sudden she spoke.
'Launce,' said she, 'I'm going to be married!'
She never moved her head off my shoulder, leaning with her elbow on the
edge of the settle, and looking away from me out at the door. Neither
did she draw her hand from mine, but rather settled it the more kindly,
nestling it in my palm.
Yet anyone might have knocked me off the oaken settle with a straw.
'Married!' said I. 'Ay, Kate, lass, of course you are going to be
married. 'Tis what you and I must come to. I assure you I oftentimes
have been thinking about that. There are not the makings of an old maid
about you!'
This I said and waited for the answer of her eyes, in order to laugh
again and make my jest. But she did not look at me. I do not think she
heard me.
'I am to be married on Thursday!' she said calmly.
'Kate Allison!' I said, trying to turn up her head that I might look
into her eyes. I thought to see the make-believe in them. But as women
know how to do, she evaded me without seeming to be conscious of it.
'Why, Kate Allison, sweetheart!' said I, 'how can I be ready by
Thursday, laid here on my back, with only you to care for me?'
'I am to be married on Thursday to Robert Harburgh!' she said.
Then I drew my hand away, and sat as erect and stern as the settle and
my sickness would let me, for it is hard to appear dignified and like a
soldier, lying on a couch and wrapped in women's shawls.
'I am deceived!' cried I, 'mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted,
has betrayed me, coming to steal that which was dear to me when I lay
most weak and weary.'
And I think I made as if to rise, for I had an idea that I must go and
get my sword--though what for, I cannot now imagine. But Kate Allison
gently put me back on the pillows, and sat down beside me, taking one of
my hands again, laying it against her cheek, and drawing at the same
time her stool nearer to me.
I tried to withdraw my hand from hers, but being weak she masterfully
kept it, so that the tears sprang to my eyes for very helplessness and
anger.
'You have played with me and deceived me, Kate Allison,' I cried, as
soon as I could command my voice; 'you have forgotten the old days and
all that we were to one another.'
Nevertheless Kate Allison never winced but let me say my say out. And
by this I knew that the old days were gone indeed. She was mightily set
in her mind.
'Launce,' she said gently, 'Launce, dear sweetheart, hearken--I am fond
of you. No lass in Carrick but would like you for a lad and a lover,
even for your very feults, which are what all may see.'
What she might have meant I have even yet no idea.
'Ye are perfect for a lad that comes courting, and I liked ye fine--ay,
and like ye yet. But I saw lang syne that the lads that court best are
not the men that marry best.'
'Women are all traitors!' said I, with indignation tingling through my
body; 'they kiss and they forget. And then in a trice they go kiss
another--'
'Ay,' replied Kate Allison, with a little more gravity, 'and I mean to
have a short word with you on that very thing.'
She paused for a moment, and looked staidly and thoughtfully out of the
window. I believed at nineteen that I wholly understood all women. But
now I know that when I am twice that and more, the simplest seeming of
them will be able to wrap me in her daidly-apron, and sell me in the
market for green cabbage.
'Listen, Launce, my dear,' she said. 'I was but a Grieve's lass, and
not unbonny of my face, so you courted me. You longed after kissing,
being a heartsome lad with a way with you and a glint in your e'e. And
so you kissed me, and in my youth and folly I said ye not nay. But you
went over the hill to the Boreland and you kissed Grace, and you kissed
the lass at the house of the Red Moss--and you thought that I would
never know it. And more, you expected that none else should ever come
near to kiss me. Ay, and would have waxed mightily indignant and flashed
a brave sword had any dared, for that is the excellent way of the lads
that come courting--but not at all the way of the men that wise women
marry.'
I was mazed and confounded before her, but could not answer a word, for
the thing was as true as if she had read my heart. Where had the young
lass so learned the ways of men?
'Forgotten your kisses, Launce?' she went on. 'And what of them? I
count kisses but as the X's and O's that bairns make on the flags with
soft cam stone--gone when the game is over.'
'The home-coming from the fair at Maybole and the kisses that you and I
then kissed,' said I, bitterly, 'were these X's or O's? I rede ye tell
me!'
'Launce,' said Kate Allison, 'we dreamed a pleasant dream, you and I.
We have awaked. It is a new day. We wash the night fantasies off our
faces, and are ready to meet the morning with the sunshine in our eyes.
Together we have sipped the cream. It is time to drink the milk. We
have gathered the flowers--let us look to the fruit.'
'Kate,' said I, more kindly, 'when did you think all these things?'
For the lassie made me marvel with the aptness of her speech, and
ashamed with her plain saying of things that I had hardly named within
myself.
'Ah,' she said gently and wisely, 'the thoughts of a lass when a lad
comes courting her, are more than she tells with her mouth. For many a
kiss is honey-sweet on the lips, but bitter as gall in the heart. Yet
so has it not been with yours and mine. We loved and we part, even as
the way-gaun of the wind that kissed the apple blossom in the spring
when the year was young and glad.'
She made to rise from her seat.
'I must go,' she said.
'To go meet Robert Harburgh and to kiss him. I thought I knew his
whistle!' said I, with my heart raging angry and disconsolate in spite
of her fine words, which I could not answer.
'Ay,' she said, rising and setting her lips tenderly to my brow, which I
pettishly turned away, being weakly sullen, 'even so--to meet Robert
Harburgh and to kiss him.'
And with that she passed to the door. She turned ere she went out to
say a last word.
'And you, Launce, my lad, will also one day desire to leave kissing
comfits and find abiding love. And you need not go far afield to look
for it either.'
Thus I was left alone with a heaving heart. And I am not ashamed to say
that I wept bitterly for poor Launce Kennedy, who had none to care for
him in all the wide lone world, in which he was now so sore wounded and
cast aside like an old shoe or a broken sword.
But even as I wept and pitied myself, Nell Kennedy danced in, merry as
the morn, and brought a great spray of belated hawthorn to set in a dish
of water to keep the room sweet.
And I declare I never knew the young lass look so winsome before.
*CHAPTER XXII*
*A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL*
When Robert Harburgh came in to see me in the evening, I was chill
enough in my reception; but since he was of a calm temper, though so
great a sworder, I might just as well have embraced him, for all the
difference it made to him.
'So,' I said, without giving him more than time to sit down--for all my
days I must ever fly headlong at a thing and have done with it--'so you
are going to marry Kate Allison?'
'She was proposing so,' said he, as calmly as when he had walked across
the yard to the summer-house, with the hackbutt bullets splattering
about him and the guns going crack-crack down the hedgerows, like the
thumbs of a class of bairns when the dominie asks a question.
'So,' said I. 'And you were thinking, maybe, that that was the action
of a friend when your comrade was laid by the heels?'
'I was thinking so,' said he, looking out of the window at the trees.
'Did you not know,' I cried, for I was angered beyond words, being weak,
and taking ill with the cherry being thus snatched out of my mouth, 'did
you not know that Kate Allison was my lass before she was yours? Did
she not tell you that?' said I.
Now, had I been myself, I should not thus have told left-handed tales on
a lass, even though I believed with some reason that she had deceived
me.
'I was not deprived of the sight of my eyes,' said he, very quietly.
'And you mean by that--?' said I, trembling with anger.
'That I did not need telling that you had been courting the lass off and
on for a year or twa, and that she took it not ill.'
'And, in spite of that, you made up to Kate Allison when I was lying
sick unto death upon my bed?' I asked him bitterly.
'How long may you have kenned Kate Allison?' said Robert Harburgh to me
in his turn.
'Six years or so,' said I.
'And did you ever, in all that time, ask her to marry you?' he inquired.
'No,' said I, not seeing what he was driving at.
'Then,' said Robert, very drily, 'I did, though I kenned her not six
weeks. And I would not wonder,' he went on, as though deep in
meditation, 'I would not wonder but that is the reason why she is going
to marry me.'
So I turned over in bed, being deep in the sullens, and Robert Harburgh
went away, saying only, 'Now ye are angry, Launcelot, but ye will find
us both good friends, and blythe will we be to see you at the five-merk
lands of Chitterlintie which my Lord Cassillis is setting to Kate and
me.'
However, as things fell out, the wedding was not to be on the Thursday,
nor yet for many Thursdays, for Robert was bidden ride with the Earl to
the Inch, his new house in Galloway. Hither he went to set pressure on
the country lairds, who were his feudal holders, to gar them pay the
dues which he, Grab-siller John, thought had been too long overlooked by
his forebears. As the business was likely to prove a troublesome one,
he sent for Robert Harburgh to ride with him. So, without so much as
stopping to dismount, for the message came when he had been on duty,
Robert Harburgh rode away. And if you will believe it, he went without
so much as kissing his sweetheart. He leaned down and shook hands with
her! But as for me, I marvelled how she bore with that, for to my
certain knowledge she liked the other not so ill.
Just as I was daily getting stronger, I received another shock which
had, I think, even more effect on me than the other. One morning there
came Sir Thomas down from the castle, and I could see that he was full
to the teeth with news, for he walked with great confidence, and swung a
little stick made of two twisted stems of ivy which I had given him,
very quaint and curious.
'It is all done with now,' he said, as soon as ever he had gotten
himself seated; 'there are to be no more ill times in Carrick, and
kinsmen's blood shall not flow any more in the West. John Mure of
Auchendrayne and I have settled it all between us. His son and apparent
heir, James, is to marry to-morrow with my daughter.'