CHAPTER XIV
MAISIE'S NIGHT QUEST
In the street of Zaandpoort, upon a certain evening, it had grown earlydark. The sullen, sultry day had broken down at the gloaming into ablack and gurly night of rain, which came in fierce dashes, alternatingwith fickle, veering flaws and yet stranger lulls and stillnesses.Anon, when the rain slackened, the hurl of the storm overhead could beheard, while up aloft every chimney in Amersfort seemed to shriek aloudin a different key. Maisie had gone down an hour ago and barred theouter door with a stout oaken bolt, hasping the crossbar into its placeas an additional precaution. She would sit up, she said, till Williamreturned from duty, and then she would be sure to hear him approach.On a still night she could distinguish his footsteps turning out ofthe wide spaces of the Dam into the echoing narrows of the street ofZaandpoort.
She and Kate sat between the newly lighted lamp and the fire of woodwhich Maisie had insisted on making in order to keep out the gustychills of the night. A cosier little upper-room there was not to befound 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 thatday gone abroad without his blue military overcoat, and she declaredover and over that he would certainly come home wet from head to foot.Kate's needle paused, lagged, and finally stopped altogether. Herdark eyes gazed long and steadily into the fire. She saw a black andgloomy prison-cell with the wind shrieking into the glassless windows.She heard it come whistling and hooting through the bars as thoughthey were infernal harp-strings. And she thought, at once bitterly andtenderly, of one who might be even then lying upon the floor withouteither cloak or covering.
A sharp, hard sob broke into Maisie's pleasant revery. She went quicklyover to the girl, and sat down beside her.
"Be patient, Kate," she said; "it will all come right if you bide alittle. They cannot kill him, for none of the men who were wounded aredead--though for their own purposes his enemies have tried to make theprince 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 myfault--my fault," she said, and let her head fall again on Maisie'sshoulder.
"Nay," said Maisie; "but I will go to him and own to him that the faultwas mine--tell him that he was not gone a moment before I was sorry andran 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 thefiftieth 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 mucheasier comforting a man, she thought, than a girl. Now, if it had beenWilliam--
But at that moment a loud and continuous knocking was heard at theouter door, which had been so carefully barred against the storm.
"It is my dear!" cried Maisie, jumping eagerly to her feet, "and I hadnot heard his footstep turn into the street."
And she looked reproachfully at Kate, as though in this instance shehad been entirely to blame.
"It is the first time that I ever missed hearing that," she said, andran quickly down the stairs. As she threw open the fastenings a noisygust of wind rioted in, and slammed all the doors with claps likethunder.
"William!" she cried, "dear lad, forgive me; I could not hear your footfor 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 cladin a blue military mantle, under which a uniform was indistinctly seen.
"Your pardon, madam," he said, looking down upon her, "are you notMistress Gordon, the wife of Captain William Gordon, of the regiment ofthe 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 theguard-house."
Maisie felt all the warm blood ebb from about her heart. But she onlybit 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 thathe needs you urgently."
"You swear to me that he is not dead?" she said, seizing him fiercelyby the wet cuff of his coat. For the man had laid his hand upon theedge of the wind-blown door to keep it steady as he talked, or perhapsin fear lest it should be shut in his face before his errand wasaccomplished.
Without waiting for another word besides the man's reiteratedassurance, Maisie fled up-stairs, and telling Kate briefly that herhusband needed her and had sent for her to the guard-room, she thrust asheathed 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 belong away. Keep the water hot against William's return."
So saying, she shut the outer door carefully behind her, and hurriedinto the night.
Maisie had expected that the man who had brought the message wouldbe waiting to guide her, but he had vanished. The long street ofZaandpoort was bare and dark from end to end, lit only by the lightswithin the storm-beaten houses where the douce burghers of Amersfortwere sitting at supper or warming their toes at an early and unwontedfire.
Then for the first time it occurred to Maisie that she did not knowwhether her husband would be found at the guard-house of the palace, orat that by the city port, where was the main entrance to the camp. Shedecided 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, withthe idea of making him put it on when she found him. But she was gladenough, before she had ventured a hundred paces into the dark, roaringnight, to drawn it closely over her own head and wrap herself from headto foot in it.
As she turned out upon the wide spaces of the Dam of Amersfort, intowhich Zaandpoort Street opened, she almost ran into the arms of thewatch. An officer, who went first with a lantern, stopped her.
"Whither away so fast and so late, maiden?" he said; "an thou give nota 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 amessenger, 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 theguard-house. He is a captain in the Scots regiment, called that of theCovenant."
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 theport 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 goodman. He carried the banner at Ayrsmoss, a battle in Scotland where manywere slain, and after which he was the only man of the hill folk leftalive."
"Go with her, thou, then," commanded the officer, "and bring her insafety to her husband. It is not fitting, madam, that you should beon the streets of the city at midnight and alone. Good-night and goodspeed to you, lady. Men of the city guard, forward!"
And with that the watch swung briskly up the street, the light of theirleader'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 challengingthe soldiers of the guard at the palace.
"Captain William Gordon? Yea, he bides within," said a stern-visagedsergeant, in the gusty outer port. "Who might want him at this time ofnight?"
/> "His wife," said the soldier of the watch, indicating Maisie with hishand.
The sergeant bent his brows, as if he thought within him that this wasneither hour nor place for the domesticities. Nevertheless, he openedan inner door, saluted upon the threshold, spoke a few words, andwaited.
Will Gordon himself came out almost instantly in full uniform. Onecheek was somewhat ruddy with sitting before the great fire, which castpleasant 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 hourago, or it may be less, that you needed me most urgently. I thought youhad been sick, or wounded, at the least. So I spared not, but hastedhither alone, running all the way. But I came on the watch, and theofficer sent this good man with me."
Will Gordon laughed.
"Some one hath been playing April-fool overly late in the day. If Icatch him I will swinge him tightly therefor. He might have put thee ingreat peril, little one."
"I had a dagger, William," said Maisie, determinedly, putting her handon her breast; "and had I a mind I could speak bad words also, if anyhad 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 willrisk the prince coming on such a night--or what would be worse, Mr.Michael Shields, who is our regimental chaplain and preceptor-generalin righteousness."
Presently they issued forth, Maisie and her husband walking closetogether. His arm was about her, and the one blue military cloak provedgreat enough for two. They walked along, talking right merrily, to thestreet of Zaandpoort. At the foot of the stair they stopped with a gaspof 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 toshake the drops of rain from the cloak.
"Kate, Kate, where are you?" cried Maisie, as she reached thelanding-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 lampburned calmly and steadily upon its ledge. But the chairs were mostlyoverturned. The curtain was torn down, and flapped in the gusts throughthe window, which stood open towards the canal. Kate's Bible layfluttering its leaves on the tiles of the fireplace. The floor wasstained with the mud of many confused footmarks. A scrap of lace fromKate's sleeve hung on a nail by the window. But in all the rooms ofthe house in the street of Zaandpoort there was no sign of the girlherself. She had completely vanished.
Pale to the lips, and scarce knowing what they did, Will Gordon and hiswife sat down at opposite sides of the table, and stared blankly ateach other without speech or understanding.
Lochinvar: A Novel Page 17