Lochinvar: A Novel

Thus gossiping to keep up Wat Gordon's spirits, the ancient dame led the way down the passages, with a foot that was yet light upon the heather, though seventy years scarcely counted up all her mortal span.

"Clerk McCaskill," cried Jean, "ye'll mind Maister Walter? Rise up and welcome him! For it is in his hoose that ye are sheltered, and, indeed, his very ale that ye are drinkin' at this moment."

Peter McCaskill rose to his feet and held out his hand to Wat. He was dressed apparently in the same ancient green surtout he had worn in the year of Bothwell – a garment which seemed never to get any worse, nor yet to drop piecemeal from his shoulders with age, but to renew itself from decade to decade in a decrepit but evergreen youth.

"I am rejoiced to see you in your ain castle, my lord," said the curate, ceremoniously. Then, catching sight of the pale, desperate face, he exclaimed, in a different tone, "Preserve us, laddie, what has ta'en ye? Hae ye slain a man to his wounding – a young man to his hurt? Are the dead-runners on your track?"

For, indeed, Wat stood like a wild thing, hard beset by the hunters, which at the last has turned to bay in its lair.

But Wat put aside all questionings with a wave of his hand, a movement which had something of his old, swift recklessness in it, as of the days when they named him the Wildcat of Lochinvar.

"Tell me the day of the month," he gasped, as he stood there in the midst of the floor before the fire of logs which burned on the irons of the house-place, swaying a little on his feet, and ever checking himself like a man drunken with wine.

The curate took a little calendar from his pocket – a record of saints' days and services, but interspersed with the reckonings of ale-houses and the scores of cock-fightings.

"'Tis the eve of the eighth day of September," he said, moistening his plump thumb to turn over the leaf that he might not be mistaken in the month.

"Thank God, I have yet two days!" cried Wat, and fell forward upon the shoulder of the curate.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE CURATE OF DALRY

Peter McCaskill received the weight deftly, as though he had been accustomed all his life to be charged down upon without a moment's notice by unconscious men.

"Easy does it, my lord," he said; "ye will soon be better. He's been owertaken, ye see – a wee drappie does it on an empty stomach," he explained to Jean Gordon. "Often hae I warned my folk – aye, even frae the pulpit, the very horns o' the altar, as it were – no' to tak' drink on an empty stomach!"

"Empty fiddlestick! Lay the laddie here!" cried Jean Gordon; "do ye no' see that the lad is deein' on his feet? He hasna seen drink for weeks, I'll wager – no, nor Christian meat either, by a' appearances."

She stopped to take off his boots. The soaked remnants of the sole came away in her hand.

"Mercy!" she cried, "the poor lad maun hae been in sore want. Tak' haud o' him soothly and tentily, Peter."

And so the kindly old lady, peering closely with her dim, short-sighted eyes, and the burly, red-gilled curate undressed Wat Gordon gently, and laid him in the bed on which his mother had died – the flanking pillars of which were hacked with the swords of the troopers from Carsphairn who had come to seek him after the sentence of outlawry.

"Peety me!" said Jean Gordon, "what will we do wi' the puir laddie? I'll get him some broth gin he can tak' them."

So, in a trice, Wat, having come a little to himself, was sitting up and taking "guid broth o' the very best, wi' a beef-bane boiled to ribbons intil't," as Jean Gordon nominated the savory stew, while she sat on the bed and fed him in mouthfuls with the only silver spoon Grier of Lag had left in the once well-plenished house of Lochinvar.

Wat sat fingering his gold heart and looking about him. He seemed like a man who has risen to the surface and finds himself unexpectedly in a boat after a nightmare experience of death in perilous deeps of the sea.

"Is there a horse about the house?" queried Wat, presently, looking at Jean Gordon out of his hollow, purple-rimmed eyes.

She thought that he still dreamed or doted.

"A horse, my laddie!" she cried. "How should there be a horse aboot the house of Lochinvar? The stables were never so extensive that I heard o'; and, troth, Rob Grier o' Lag, deil's lick-pot that he is, has no' left mony aboot the estates. There's a plough-horse ower by Gordiestoun, if that's what ye want."

And in her heart she said, "It's a lee, Guid forgie me. But onything to pacify the lad and get him asleep."

"I ken the best horse in a' this country-side," said the curate, going back to his ale as if nothing had happened, "and that's muckle Sandy Gordon's chairger ower at the Earlstoun. He's roarin' at the Convention in Edinburgh, I'se warrant, and he'll no' need 'Drumclog.' Gin ye hae a notion of the beast, I can borrow him for ye."

Wat started up with eager eyes.

"On the morning of the tenth have the horse at the loch-side, and I shall be forever bound and obligated to ye."

The curate nodded his head like one that grants the smallest and easiest favor.

"It shall be done; by six o' the clock Drumclog will be there, or my name is not Peter Mac – Eh! what is't, woman?" he exclaimed, turning a little testily to Jean Gordon, who for the last minute had been nudging him vehemently with her elbow to be quiet. "I'll no' haud my tongue for a bletherin' auld wretch. I hae held my tongue ower often in this pairish. Gin the lad wants a horse, e'en let him hae a horse. It is ane o' the best symptoms that I ken o'. I mind weel, yince, when I was a laddie like him and in love – "

But the reminiscence of Peter McCaskill's early love was not destined to be recorded, at least in this place, for Jean Gordon took the matter into her own hands and pushed the indignant curate out of the room. But even as he went he turned in the doorway and said, "Bide ye still in your bed the day, laddie. Ye shall find muckle Sandy Gordon's horse, Drumclog, at the west landing on the mornin' o' the tenth."

"Deil a fear o' ye," muttered Jean Gordon; "ye'll lie doucely and quietly in your bed till Jean gies ye leave to rise – tenth or no tenth!"

* * * * *

Then sleep descended like a brown hissing cloud upon the tortured soul and weary body of Wat Gordon, and deep, dreamless, billowy oblivion held him till the morrow. It was ten of the clock when he awoke, with a frenzied start, demanding how long he had slept.

Jean Gordon, in whose hands was the morning porridge-spurtle (and, as it were, the care of all the churches), tried the method of sarcasm.

"Weel, laddie," she said, "ye juist cam' here yestreen, and gin yesterday was the eighth, as Peter telled ye, ye will maybe be able to mak' oot that this will be the ninth. And come off the dead-cauld flags this instant with your bare feet, and you in a pour of sweat. There's nae sense ava in the callant! What are ye in sic a fyke for aboot the tenth and the tenth? Are the eleventh and the twelfth no' as guid days? Did the same Lord no' make them a'?"

Wat went back obediently to bed.

"Mind," he said, "if you are lying to me, you shall fry in hell-fire for that lie. For a man's life and soul are on your truth."

"The boy's fair dementit," cried Jean; "what for should auld Jean Gordon lee to him? Tell me your trouble, laddie," she said, going nearer to him. "For I've had trouble o' my ain a' my life, and weel I ken there are few things so evil that they canna be mended – that is, if ye are minded to stroke them the richt way o' the hair."

At this point Peter McCaskill was heard shuffling along the passage, but Jean was over quick for him. She rose and very promptly and unceremoniously shut the door in his face.

"Gae 'way wi' ye the noo, Peter," she said, peremptorily; "tak' the fish-pole and fetch in a fry o' trouts for the breakfast. Ye'll get naething else to eat gin ye dinna."

"Noo, laddie," she said, sitting down beside Wat, with a world of sympathetic invitation in her voice, "tell me a' your heart's trouble."

So, with a great sense of relief, Wat told the tale to the old lady, whose own love-trouble of fifty years before had kept her maiden all her life.

As he spoke, Jean stroked the hand which hung over the edge of the bed.

"Laddie, my laddie!" were all the articulate words she said, but she soothed Wat with a little, low, continuous murmur of sound as he fretted and fumed at his helplessness.

"Ye shall get your lass – fear ye not that," she said, when he had finished. "I hae heard o' the wedding. They say the lass does naething but bide in her chamber and greet. She has fallen away to a shadow. But be that as it may, there is a great repair o' folk to the house o' Balmaghie. I saw a heap o' the queer, daftlike folk o' the north riding by, wi' feathers in their checked bonnets, and tartan trews on their hurdies – aye, trews of bonny tartan claith – ye never saw the like. But ye shall hae your lass, were it only to spite the menseless crew. Peter and me will help ye to her."

In what manner Jean Gordon was to help him Wat Gordon knew not – nor, for the matter of that, Peter McCaskill either – save by getting him the loan of his cousin Sandy's horse, and even that might be a Highlandman's loan – taken without the asking. But Wat said nothing, only laid him down contentedly, while Jean Gordon set off to provide the breakfast she had so abruptly denied to the curate.

Presently Peter came in with his trouts, for in the loch of Lochinvar the spotted beauties were infinitely less shy and infrequent than in later days they have become.

"Benedictus benedicat!" quoth Peter, who knew his Latin by ear, and sat him down.

"That's a daft, heathen-like grace," said Jean. "I shouldna wonder gin the folks did rabble ye and tear your white clouts ower your head, if ye gied them balderdash like that in the pulpit."