At Whitehall, this 14 of Aprile, 1688.
Walter bent his knee, kissed the king's message, and, rising to his feet, as courteously folded it and handed it back to Lieutenant Scarlett.
"I am the king's subject, it is true," he said. "Moreover, the king is anointed, and his word binds those to whom it is addressed. But I am also the soldier of the Prince of Orange and of the States-General of Holland. I eat their bread; I wear their uniform; I take their pay; to them I have sworn the oath of allegiance. I am in this inn of Brederode as a plain soldier, charged with orders given to me by my superior officer, and I cannot depart from these orders while I live a free man and able to carry them out."
"But the king – the king – ?" sternly reiterated Scarlett, rising for the first time to his feet, and clapping the palm of his hand sharply on the table by way of emphasis.
"The king," replied Walter, in a voice deeply moved, "is indeed my king. But he has no right to command a soldier to become a traitor, nor to turn an honest man into a spy. He may command my life and my fortunes. He may command my death. But, landless, friendless, and an exile though I be, mine honor at least is mine own. I refuse to deliver the papers with which I have been intrusted, or to be a traitor to the colors under which I serve."
While Walter spoke Scarlett stood impatiently tapping the table with the paper, which he had refolded.
"The request, at any rate, is nothing more than a formality," he said. "You are here alone. Your three attendant rascals are, equally with myself, in the pay of the King of France. They wait under arms at that door – "
"Under butchers' knives, say rather!" interrupted Lochinvar, scornfully.
But Scarlett paid no heed to his words.
"If you will deliver up the papers cheerfully, according to the mandate of your king, I have in my pocket a patent of nobility made out for the man who should put them into my hand at the inn of Brederode – besides the promise of pardons and restoration of heritages for all his friends and associates at present lying outside the law in Scotland and elsewhere. Think well, for much more than the present hangs upon your answer. Life and death for many others are in it!"
Wat stood still without making any answer. With his left hand he turned the dainty lace upon the cuff of his coat-sleeve carefully back. He thought vaguely of his love whom he was renouncing to go to certain death, of the friends whose pardon he was refusing. Most clearly of all he bethought him of the old tower in the midst of the Loch of Lochinvar under the heathery fell of lone Knockman. Then he looked straight at the man before him.
"Jack Scarlett," he said, "it was you who taught me how to thrust and parry. Then your hand was like steel, but your heart was not also hard as the millstone. You were not used to be a man untrue, forsworn. God knows then, at least, you were no traitor. You were no spy. You were no murderer, though a soldier of fortune. You called me a friend, and I was not ashamed of the name. I do not judge you even now. You may have one conception of loyalty to the king we both acknowledge. I have another. You are in the service of one great prince, and you are (I believe it) wholly faithful to him. Do me the honor to credit that I can be as faithful to my uniform, as careless of life, and as careful of honor in the service of my master as you would desire to be in yours."
Scarlett turned his eyes away. He felt, though he did not yet acknowledge, the extraordinary force and fervor of the appeal – delivered by Wat with red-hot energy, with a hiss in the swift words of it like that which the smith's iron gives forth when it is thrust into the cooling caldron.
Wat turned full upon him. The two men stood eye to eye, with only the breadth of the table between them.
"Look you, Scarlett," Lochinvar said again, without waiting for his reply. "You are the finest swordsman in the world; I am but your pupil; yet here and now I will fight you to the death for the papers if you will promise to draw off your men and give me free passage from this place should I kill you or have you at my mercy. But I warn you that you will have to kill me without any mercy in order to get the documents from me."
Scarlett appeared to consider for a space.
"There is no risk, and, after all, it makes it less like a crime," he said, under his breath. But aloud he only answered, "I will fight you for the papers here and now."
Walter bowed his head, well pleased.
"That is spoken like my old Jack!" he said.
Lieutenant Scarlett went to the arras and threw it open with both hands. It ran with brazen rings upon a bar in the Flemish manner.
"Clairvaux! Ferrand!" he cried.
And two young officers in gay uniforms immediately appeared.
"Gentlemen," he said, addressing them, "this is Walter Gordon, Lord of Lochinvar. He has done me the honor to propose crossing swords with me here in this room. If he should kill me or have me at his mercy he is to be allowed free passage and outgate. Also he fights far from his friends, and therefore one of you will be good enough to act as his second."
The younger of the two officers, he who had answered to the name of Ferrand, a tall, fair-haired Frenchman of the Midi, at once said, "I shall consider it an honor to act as second to the Sieur of Lochinvar."
"In the event of my death you will consider these orders imperative, and equally binding upon your honor as upon mine own," said John Scarlett.
The two officers bowed.
"I think we should know the length of each other's swords by this time," he said, looking at Wat; "there is therefore no need that our seconds should measure them." For he had noted Walter's disinclination to let his weapon leave his hand. So far as his own life was concerned, Wat hoped little from this combat. But he desired greatly to die an honorable death, with his face to a worthy enemy; for John Scarlett had been in his time the greatest swordsman in Europe, and though Walter was by far his ablest pupil in Scotland, yet at no time could he have stood any chance in open field against his master.
So, as the swords felt one another after the salute, Wat set his teeth and wondered how long it would last, and how much Kate would ever know. There is little need to describe the fight at length. From the first Scarlett contented himself with keeping his opponent's blade in play, feeling it, humoring it, and, as it were, coaxing it into position. And for some bouts Wat fought without any of that verve and lightning versatility of fence which were his usual characteristics in action. Something seemed to paralyze his powers and weigh down his sword-blade, as though the quick and living steel had turned to lead in his hand. It might be that the feeling of ancient pupilage had returned to him, for to himself he seemed rather to be taking a lesson in the finesse of defence than to be fighting against terrible odds for his life and honor.
But suddenly a wonderful change came over him. A laugh was heard out in the passage, in which stood Haxo the Bull and his satellites – a laugh thin, acrid, unmistakable. It stung Wat to the roots of his heart. For a moment he was in difficulty. The problem divided his mind even between thrust and parry. There was no man whom he knew well whose laugh rang like that. But even as he fought he remembered how once, in the palace of the stadtholder, he had seen the prince come in leaning upon the arm of a young, dark-haired man, whose meagre, hatchet face was decorated, for all ornament, with a black mustache so scanty that it seemed twisted of twenty hairs, and whose ends hung down, one on either side of his lips, like a couple of rats' tails. This, and a certain bitter, rasping laugh to which he had at once taken a dislike, were all Wat remembered of that young man. But after the distinguished party had passed in to supper he learned that the prince's companion and confidant was one of his own nation, Murdo McAlister, Lord of Barra and the Small Isles, and that he was one to whom the Prince of Orange looked for counsel in all that did not touch the ecclesiastical position of affairs of Scotland.
The laugh which rang out from the dark passage behind the Bull, the Calf, and the Killer was the same which he had heard at the supper-party of the stadtholder.
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