Lochinvar: A Novel

by S. R. Crockett

While yet a child she had seen houses invaded by rude soldiery. She had fled from conventicle with the clatter of hoofs and the call of trumpet telling of the deadly pursuit behind her. Even the manner of her capture and her confinement on this distant isle told a plain tale of suffering endured and experience gained. Hers had been, largely by her own choice, no sheltered life passed in the bieldy howe of common things. She had met sorrow and difficulty before, face to face, eye to eye, and was ready so to encounter them again.

But to be on the island of Fiara in daily contact with her lover, to gain momentarily in knowledge of her own affection, to feel the bonds which bound her to this one man continually strengthen, were some of the new experiences of these halcyon days.

Wat and Kate walked much under the shelter of that wall of rocks which stood a hundred yards back from the sandy northern shore of the island. Here they were screened from observation in every direction save towards the north, and that way the sea was clear to the Pole. Blue and lonely it spread before them, the waves coming glittering and balancing in from the regions of ice and mist, as sunnily and invitingly as though they had been the billows of the Pacific arching themselves in thunder upon a strand of coral.

Here the two walked at morn and even, discussing, among other things, their loves, their former happenings, the strange ways of Providence: most of all their future, which, indeed, looked dark enough at the present, but which, nevertheless, shone for them with a rosy glow of hope and youth. There are no aspirants more sure of success than the young who, strong in the permanence of mutual affection, take hands and look towards the rising sun. All happens to those who know how to wait, especially if they have the necessary time before them. If they be young, the multitude of the coming years beckons them onward, and so their hearts be true and worthy, the very stars in their courses will fight for them. The hatreds and prejudices which oppose them lose their edge; their opponents, being of those that go down the slope to the dark archway of death, pass away within and are seen no more. But the young true-lovers remain. And lo! in a moment there is nothing before them but the plain way to walk in—the sweetness of a morning still young, a morning without clouds, the sweeter for the night and the long and weary way they have come together, hand in loving hand.

"Kate," said Wat, "tell me when you first knew that you loved me."

They were walking on the sand, across which the evening shadows were beginning to lengthen over the intricate maze of ripple-marks, and when each whorled worm-casting was gathering a little pool of blue shadow on its eastern side.

The girl clasped her hands behind her back and gazed abstractedly away to the sunsetting, her shapely head turned a little aside as though she were listening to the voice of her own heart and hearing its answer too keenly to dare give it vent in words.

"I think," said she, at last, very slowly—"I think I began to love you on the night when I saw you first, after I had come across the seas to Holland."

"What!" cried Lochinvar, astonished at her answer; "but then you were more hard and cruel to me than ever—would not even hear me speak, and sent me away unsatisfied and most unhappy."

Kate gave Wat a glance which said for a sufficient answer, had he possessed the wit to read it: "I was a woman, and so afraid of my own heart—you a man, and therefore could not help revealing yours."