“Good night,” said Olivia, at last, and straightway Count Victor felt the glory of the evening eclipse. He opened the door to let her pass through.
“I go back to my cell quiet enough,” she said, in low tones, and with a smiling frown upon her countenance.
“Happy prisoner!” said he, “to be condemned to no worse than your own company.”
“Ah! it is often a very dull and pitiful company that, Count Victor,” said Olivia, with a sigh.
It was not long till he, too, sought his couch, and the Baron of Doom was left alone.
Doom sat long looking at his crumbling walls, and the flaming fortunes, the blush, the heat-white and the dead grey ash of the peat-fire. He sighed now and then with infinite despondency. Once or twice he pshawed his melancholy vapours, gave a pace back and forward on the oaken floor, with a bent head, a bereaved countenance, and sat down again, indulging in the passionate void that comes to a bosom reft of its joys, its hopes and loves, and only mournful recollection left. A done man! Not an old man; not even an elderly, but a done man none the less, with the heart out of him, and all the inspiration clean gone!
Count Victor's advent in the castle had brought its own bitterness, for it was not often now that Doom had the chance to see anything of the big, brave outer world of heat and enterprise. This gallant revived ungovernably the remembrances he for ever sought to stifle—all he had been and all he had seen, now past and gone for ever, as Annapla did not scruple to tell him when the demands of her Gift or a short temper compelled her. His boyhood in the dear woods, by the weedy river-banks, in the hill-clefts where stags harboured, on a shore for ever sounding with the enchanting sea—oh, sorrow! how these things came before him. The gentle mother, with the wan, beautiful face; the eager father looking ardent out to sea—they were plain to view. And then St. Andrews, when he was a bejant of St. Leonard's, roystering with his fellows, living the life of youth with gusto, but failing lamentably at the end; then the despondency of those scanty acres and decayed walls; his marriage with the dearest woman in the world, Death at the fireside, the bairn crying at night in the arms of her fosterer; his journeys abroad, the short hour of glory and forgetfulness with Saxe at Fontenoy and Laffeldt, to be followed only by these weary years of spoliation by law, of oppression by the usurping Hanoverian.
A done man! Only a poor done man of middle age, and the fact made all the plainer to himself by contrast with his guest, alert and even gay upon a fiery embassy of retribution.
It was exactly the hour of midnight by a clock upon the mantel; a single candle, by which he had made a show of reading, was guttering all to a side and an ungracious end in a draught that came from some cranny in the ill-seamed ingle-walls, for all that the night seemed windless. A profound stillness wrapped all; the night was huge outside, with the sea dead-flat to moon and pulsing star.
He shook off his vapours vexatiously, and, as he had done on the first night of Count Victor's coming, he went to his curious orisons at the door—the orisons of the sentimentalist, the home-lover. Back he drew the bars softly, and looked at the world that ever filled him with yearning and apprehension, at the draggled garden, at the sea, with its roadway strewn with golden sand all shimmering, at the mounts—Ben Ime, Ardno, and Ben Artair, haughty in the night.
Then he shut the doors reluctantly, stood hesitating—more the done man than ever—in the darkness of the entrance, finally hurried to save the guttering candle. He lit a new one at its expiring flame and left thesalle. He went, not to his bedchamber, but to the foot of the stair that led to the upper flats, to his daughter's room, to the room of his guest, and to the ancient chapel. With infinite caution, he crept round and round on the narrow corkscrew stair; at any step it might have been a catacomb cell.
He listened at the narrow corridor leading to Olivia's room and that adjoining of her umquhile warder, Annapla; he paused, too, for a second, at Montaiglon's door. None gave sign of life. He went up higher.
A storey over the stage on which Count Victor slumbered the stair ended abruptly at an oaken door, which he opened with a key. As he entered, a wild flurry of wings disturbed the interior, and by the light of the candle and some venturesome rays of the moon a flock of bats or birds were to be seen in precipitous flight through unglazed windows and a broken roof.
Doom placed his candle in a niche of the wall and went over to an ancientarmoire, or chest, which seemed to be the only furniture of what had apparently once been the chapel of the castle, to judge from its size and the situation of an altar-like structure at the east end-.
He unlocked the heavy lid, threw it open, looked down with a sigh at its contents, which seemed, in the light of he candle, nothing wonderful. But a suit of Highland clothes, and some of the more martial appurtenances of the lost Highland state, including the dirk that had roused Montaiglon's suspicion!
He drew them out hurriedly upon the floor, but yet with an affectionate tenderness, as if they were the relics of a sacristy, and with eagerness substituted the gay tartan for his dull mulberry Saxon habiliments. It was like the creation of a man from a lay figure. The jerk at the kilt-belt buckle somehow seemed to brace the sluggish spirit; his shoulders found their old square set above a well-curved back; his feet—his knees—by an instinct took a graceful poise they had never learned in the mean immersement of breeches and Linlithgow boots. As he fastened his buckled brogues, he hummed the words of MacMhaister Allister's songs:
“Oh! the black-cloth of the Saxon,Dearer far's the Gaelic tartan!”
“Hugh Bethune's content with the waistcoat, is he?” he said to himself. “He's no Gael to be so easily pleased, and him with a freeman's liberty! And yet—and yet—I would be content myself to have the old stuff only about my heart.”
He assumed the doublet and plaid, drew down upon his brow a bonnet with an eagle plume; turned him to the weapons. The knife—the pistols—the dirk, went to their places, and last he put his hand upon the hilt of a sword—not a claymore, but the weapon he had worn in the foreign field. As foolish a piece of masquerade as ever a child had found entertainment in, and yet, if one could see it, with some great element of pathos and of dignity. For with every item of the discarded and degraded costume of his race he seemed to put on a grace not there before, a manliness, a spirit that had lain in abeyance with the clothes in that mothy chest. It was no done man who eagerly trod the floor of that ruined chapel, no lack-lustre failure of life, but one complete, commingling action with his sentiment. He felt the world spacious about him again; a summons to ample fields beyond the rotting woods and the sonorous shore of Doom. The blood of his folk, that had somehow seemed to stay about his heart in indolent clots, began to course to every extremity, and gave his brain a tingling clarity, a wholesome intoxication of the perfect man.
He drew the sword from its scabbard, joying hugely in the lisp of the steel, at its gleam in the candle-light, and he felt anew the wonder of one who had drunk the wine of life and venture to its lees.
He made with the weapon an airy academic saluteà la Gerardand the new school of fence, thrust swift in tierce like a sun-flash in forest after rain, followed with a parade, and felt an expert's ecstasy. The blood tingled to his veins; his eyes grew large and flashing; a flush came to that cheek, for ordinary so wan. Over and over again he sheathed the sword, and as often withdrew it from its scabbard. Then he handled the dirk with the pleasure of a child. But always back to the sword, handled with beauty and aplomb, always back to the sword, and he had it before him, a beam of fatal light, when something startled him, as one struck unexpectedly by a whip.
There was a furious rapping at the outer door!
The rap that startled Doom in the midst of his masquerade in the chapel of his house, came like the morning beat of drums to his guest a storey lower. Count Victor sprang up with a certainty that trouble brew, dressed with all speed, and yet with the coolness of one who has heard alarums on menaced frontiers; took his sword in hand, hesitated, remembered Olivia, and laid it down again; then descended the dark stair that seemed the very pit of hazards.
A perturbing silence had succeeded the noisy summons on the oak, and Mungo, with a bold aspect well essayed, but in no accord with the tremour of his knees and the pallor of his countenance, stood, in dragging pantaloons and the gaudy Kilmarnock cap cocked upon his bald head, at the stair-foot with a flambeau in his hand. He seemed hugely relieved to have the company of Count Victor.
“Noo, wha the deevil can we hae here at sic an unearthly oor o' nicht?” said he, trying a querulous tone befitting an irate sentinel; but the sentence trailed off unconvincingly, because his answer came too promptly in another peremptory summons from without.
“Lord keep 's!” whispered the little man, no longer studying to sustain his martialrôle. He looked nervously at Count Victor standing silently by, with some amusement at the perturbation of the garrison and a natural curiosity as to what so untimely a visit might portend. It was apparent that Mungo was for once willing to delegate his duty as keeper of the bartizan to the first substitute who offered, but here was no move to help him out of his quandary.
“It's gey gash this!” whispered the little man. “And the tide in, too! And the oor sae late!”
These sinister circumstances seemed to pile upon his brain till his knees bent below the weight of accumulated terror, and Montaiglon must smile at fears not all unreasonable, as he felt himself.
“Oh! better late than never—is not that the proverb, Master Mungo?” said he. “Though, indeed, it is not particularly consoling to a widow's husband.”
“I'd gie a pound Scots to ken wha chaps,” said Mungo, deaf to every humour.
“Might I suggest your asking? It is, I have heard, the customary proceeding,” said Count Victor.
“Wha's there?” cried Mungo, with an ear to the wood, that appeared to have nothing human outside, for now for a little there was absolute stillness. Then an answer as from a wraith—the humble request of some one for admission.
“Noo, that's michty droll,” said Mungo, his face losing its alarm and taking on a look of some astonishment. “Haud that,” and he thrust the torch in the Frenchman's hand. Without another word he drew back the bars, opened the door, and put out his head. He was caught by the throat and plucked forth into the darkness.
Count Victor could not have drawn a weapon had he had one ere the door fell in thundering on the walls. He got one glimpse of thesans culottes, appealed again to the De Chenier macer in his ancestry, and flung the flambeau at the first who entered.
The light went out; he dropped at a boy's intuition upon a knee and lowered his head. Over him in the darkness poured his assailants, too close upon each other in their eagerness, and while they struggled at the stair-foot he drew softly back. Out in the night Mungo wailed lugubrious in the hands of some of his captors; within there was a wonderful silence for a little, the baffled visitors recovering themselves with no waste of words, and mounting the stair in pursuit of the gentleman they presumed to have preceded them. When they were well up, he went to the door and made it fast again, leaving Mungo to the fate his stupidity deserved.
Doom's sleeping-chamber lay behind; he passed along the corridor quickly, knocked at the door, got no answer, and entered.
It was as he had fancied—his host was gone, his couch had not been occupied. A storm of passion swept through him; he felt himself that contemptible thing, a man of the world betrayed by a wickedness that ought to be transparent. They were in the plot then, master and man, perhaps even—but no, that was a thought to quell on the moment of its waking; she at least was innocent of all these machinations, and upstairs now, she shared, without a doubt, the alarms of Annapla. That familiar of shades and witches, that student of the fates, was a noisy poltroon when it was the material world that threatened; she was shrieking again.
“Loch Sloy! Loch Sloy!” now rose the voices overhead, surely the maddest place in the world for a Gaelic slogan: it gave him a sense of unspeakable savagery and antique, for it was two hundred years since his own family had cried “Cammercy!” on stricken fields.
He paused a moment, irresolute.
A veritable farce! he thought. It would have been so much easier for his host to hand him over without these play-house preliminaries.
But Olivia! but Olivia!
He felt the good impulse of love and anger, the old ichor of his folk surged through his veins, and without a weapon he went upstairs, trusting to his wits to deal best with whatever he would there encounter.
It seemed an hour since they had entered; in truth it was but a minute or two, and they were still in the bewildering blackness of the stair, one behind another in its narrow coils, and seemingly wisely dubious of too precipitate an advance. He estimated that they numbered less than half a dozen when he came upon the rear-most of thequeue.
“Loch Sloy!” cried the leader, somewhat too theatrically for illusion.
“Cammercy for me!” thought Montaiglon: he was upon the tail, and clutched to drag the last man down. Fate was kind, she gave the bare knees of the enemy to his hand, and behold! here was his instrument—in the customary knife stuck in the man's stocking. It was Count Victor's at a flash: he stood a step higher, threw his arm over the shoulder of the man, pulled him backward into the pit of the stair and stabbed at him as he fell.
“Un!” said he as the wretch collapsed upon himself, and the knife seemed now unnecessary. He clutched the second man, who could not guess the tragedy behind, for the night's business was all in front, and surely only friends were in the rear—he clutched the second lower, and threw him backward over his head.
“Deux!” said Count Victor, as the man fell limp behind him upon his unconscious confederate.
The third in front turned like a viper when Count Victor's clutch came on his waist, and drove out with his feet. The act was his own undoing. It met with no resistance, and the impetus of his kick carried him off the balance and threw him on the top of his confederates below.
“Trois!” said Montaiglon. “Pulling corks is the most excellent training for such a warfare,” and he set himself almost cheerfully to number four.
But number four was not in the neck of the bottle: this ferment behind him propelled him out upon the stairhead, and Montaiglon, who had thrown himself upon him, fell with him on the floor. Both men recovered their feet at a spring. A moment's pause was noisy with the cries of the domestic in her room, then the Frenchman felt a hand pass rapidly over his habiliments and seek hurriedly for his throat, as on a sudden inspiration. What that precluded was too obvious: he fancied he could feel the poignard already plunging in his ribs, and he swiftly tried a fall with his opponent.
It was a wrestler's grip he sought, but a wrestler he found, for arms of a gigantic strength went round him, clasping his own to his side and rendering his knife futile; a Gaelic malediction hissed in his ear; he felt breath hot and panting; his own failed miserably, and his blood sang in his head with the pressure of those tremendous arms that caught him to a chest like a cuirass of steel. But if his hands were bound his feet were free: he placed one behind his enemy and flung his weight upon him, so that they fell together. This time Count Victor was uppermost. His hands were free of a sudden; he raised the knife to stab at the breast heaving under him, but he heard as from another world—as from a world of calm and angels—the voice of Olivia in her room crying for her father, and a revulsion seized him, so that he hesitated at his ugly task. It was less than a second's slackness, yet it was enough, for his enemy rolled free and plunged for the stair. Montaiglon seized him as he fled; the skirt of his coat dragged through his hands, and left him with a button. He dropped it with a cry, and turned in the darkness to find himself more frightfully menaced than before.
This time the plunge of the dirk was actual; he felt it sear his side like a hot iron, and caught the wrist that held it only in time to check a second blow. His fingers slipped, his head swam; a moment more, and a Montaiglon was dead very far from his pleasant land of France, in a phantom castle upon a shadowy sea among savage ghosts.
“Father! father!”
It was Olivia's voice; a light was thrown upon the scene, for she stood beside the combatants with a candle in her hand.
They drew back at a mutual spasm, and Montaiglon saw that his antagonist was the Baron of Doom!
Doom, astounded, threw the dagger from him with an exclamation. His eyes, large and burning yet with passion, were wholly for Count Victor, though his daughter Olivia stood there at his side holding the light that had revealed the furies to each other, her hair in dark brown cataracts on her shoulders, and eddying in bewitching curls upon her ears and temples, that gleamed below like the foam of mountain pools.
“Father! father! what does this mean?” she cried. “There is some fearful mistake here.”
“That is not to exaggerate the position, at all events,” thought Count Victor, breathing hard, putting the knife unobserved behind him. He smiled to this vision and shrugged his shoulders. He left the elucidation of the mystery to the other gentleman, this counsellor of forgiveness and peace, clad head to foot in the garb he contemned, and capable of some excellent practice with daggers in the darkness.
“I'll never be able to say how much I regret this, Count Victor,” said Doom. “Good God! your hands were going, and in a second or two more—”
“For so hurried a farce,” said Count Victor, “the lowered light was something of a mistake,n'est ce pas?I—I—I just missed the point of the joke,” and he glanced at the dagger glittering sinister in the corner of the stair.
“I have known your mistake all along,” cried Olivia. “Oh! it is a stupid thing this. I will tell you! It is my father should have told you before.”
The clangour of the outer door closing recalled that there was danger still below. Olivia put a frightened hand on her father's arm. “A thousand pardons, Montaiglon,” cried he; “but here's a task to finish.” And without a word more of excuse or explanation he plunged downstairs.
Count Victor looked dubiously after him, and made no move to follow.
“Surely you will not be leaving him alone there,” said Olivia. “Oh! you have not your sword. I will get your sword.” And before he could reply she had flown to his room. She returned with the weapon. Her hand was all trembling as she held it out to him. He took it slowly; there seemed no need for haste below now, for all was silent except the voices of Doom and Mungo.
“It is very good of you, Mademoiselle Olivia,” said he. “I thank you, but—but—you find me in a quandary. Am I to consider M. le Baron as ally or—or—or—” He hesitated to put the brutal alternative to the daughter.
Olivia stamped her foot impetuously, her visage disturbed by emotions of anxiety, vexation, and shame.
“Oh, go! go!” she cried. “You will not, surely, be taking my father for a traitor to his own house—for a murderer.”
“I desire to make the least of a pleasantry I am incapable of comprehending, yet his dagger was uncomfortably close to my ribs a minute or two ago,” sard Count Victor reflectively.
“Oh!” she cried. “Is not this a coil? I must even go myself,” and she made to descend.
“Nay, nay,” said Count Victor softly, holding her back. “Nay, nay; I will go if your whole ancestry were ranked at the foot.”
“It is the most stupid thing,” she cried, as he left her; “I will explain when you come up. My father is a Highland gentleman.”
“So, by the way, was Drimdarroch,” said Montaiglon, but that was to himself. He smiled back into the illumination of the lady's candle, then descended into the darkness with a brow tense and frowning, and his weapon prepared for anything.
The stair was vacant, so was the corridor. The outer door was open; the sound of the sea came in faint murmurs, the mingled odours of pine and wrack borne with it. Out in the heavens a moon swung among her stars most queenly and sedate, careless altogether of this mortal world of strife and terrors; the sea had a golden roadway. A lantern light bobbed on the outer edge of the rock, shining through Olivia's bower like a will-o'-the-wisp, and he could hear in low tones the voices of Doom and his servant. Out at sea, but invisible, for beyond the moon's influence, a boat was being rowed fast: the beat of the oars on the thole-pins came distinctly. And in the wood behind, now cut off from them by the riding waves, owls called incessantly.
It was like a night in a dream, like some vast wheeling chimera of fever—that plangent sea before, those terrors fleeing, and behind, a maiden left with her duenna in a castle demoniac.
Doom and Mungo came back from the rock edge, silently almost, brooding over a mystery, and the three looked at each other.
“Well, they are gone,” said the Baron at last, showing the way to his guest.
“What, gone!” said Montaiglon, incapable of restraining his irony. “Not all of them?”
“O Lord! but this is the nicht!” cried the little servant who carried the lantern. “I micht hae bided a' my days in Fife and never kent what war was. The only thing that daunts me is that I should hae missed my chance o' a whup at them, for they had me trussed like a cock before I put my feet below me when they pu'd me oot.”
He drew the bars with nervous fingers, and seemed to dread his master as much as he had done the enemy. Olivia had come down to the corridor; aloft Annapla had renewed her lamentations; the four of them stood clustered in the narrow passage at the stair-foot.
“What for did ye open the door, Mungo?” asked Doom,—not the Doom of doleful days, of melancholy evenings of study and of sour memories, not the done man, but one alert and eager, a soldier, in the poise of his body, the set of his limbs, the spirit of his eye.
“Here's a new man!” thought Montaiglon, silently regarding him. “Devilry appears to have a marvellous power of stimulation.”
“I opened the door,” said Mungo, much perturbed.
“For what?” said Doom shortly.
“There was a knock.”
“I heard it. The knock was obvious; it dirled the very roof of the house. But it was not necessary to open at a knock at this time of morning; ye must have had a reason. Hospitality like that to half-a-dozen rogues from Arroquhar, who had already made a warm night for ye, was surely stretched a little too far. What did ye open for?”
Mungo seemed to range his mind for a reply. He looked to Montaiglon, but got no answer in the Frenchman's face; he looked over Montaiglon's shoulder at Olivia, standing yet in the tremour of her fears, and his eye lingered. It was no wonder, thought Count Victor, that it lingered there.
“Come, come, I'm waiting my answer!” cried Doom, in a voice that might have stirred a corps in the battlefield.
“I thought there wasna mair than ane,” said Mungo.
“But even one! At this time of morning! And is it your custom to open to a summons of that kind without finding out who calls?”
“I thought I kent the voice,” said Mungo, furtively looking again at Olivia.
“And whose was it, this voice that could command so ready and foolish an acquiescence on the part of my honest sentinel Mungo Boyd?” asked Doom incredulously.
“Ye can ask that!” replied the servant desperately; “it's mair than I can tell. All I ken is that I thought the voice fair-spoken, and I alloo it was a daft-like thing to do, but I pu'ed the bar, I had nae sooner dune't nor I was gripped by the thrapple and kep' doon by a couple o' the blackguards that held me a' the time the ither three or four were—”
Doom caught him by the collar and shook him angrily.
“Ye lie, ye Fife cat; I see't in your face!”
“I can speak as to the single voice and its humility, and to the sudden plucking forth of this gentleman,” said Count Victor quietly, at sea over this examination. But for the presence of the woman he would have cried out at the mockery of the thing.
“You must hear my explanation, Montaiglon,” said Doom. “If you will come to the hall, I will give it. Olivia, you will come too. I should have taken your hints of yesterday morning, and the explanation of this might have been unnecessary.”
Doom and his guest went to thesalle; Olivia lingered a moment behind.
“Who was it, Mungo?” said she, whisperingly to the servant. “I know by the face of you that you are keeping something from my father.”
“Am I?” said he. “Humph! It's Fife very soon for Mungo Boyd, I'm tellin' ye.”
“But who was it?” she persisted.
“The Arroquhar men,” said he curtly; “and that's all I ken aboot it,” and he turned to leave her.
“And that is not the truth, Mungo,” said Olivia, with great dignity. “I think with my father that you are telling what is not the true word,” and she said no more, but followed to thesalle.
On the stairway Count Victor had trod upon the button he had drawn from the skirts of his assailant; he picked it up without a word, to keep it as a souvenir. Doom preceded him into the room, lit some candles hurriedly at the smouldering fire, and turned to offer him a chair.
“Our—our friends are gone,” said he. “You seem to have badly wounded one of them, for the others carried him bleeding to the water-side, as we have seen from his blood-marks on the rock: they have gone, as they apparently must have come, by boat. Sit down, Olivia.”
His daughter had entered. She had hurriedly coiled her hair up, and the happy carelessness of it pleased Montaiglon's eye like a picture.
Still he said nothing; he could not trust himself to speak, facing, as he fancied yet he did, a traitor.
“I see from your face you must still be dubious of me,” said Doom. He waited for no reply, but paced up and down the room excitedly, the pleats of his kilt and the thongs of his purse swinging to his movements: a handsome figure, as Mont-aiglon could not but confess. “I am still shattered at the nerve to think that I had almost taken your life there in a fool's blunder. You must wonder to see me in this—in this costume.”
He could not even yet come to his explanation, and Olivia must help him.
“What my father would tell you, if he was not in such a trouble, Count Victor, is what I did my best to let you know last night. It is just that he breaks the laws of George the king in this small affair of our Highland tartan. It is a fancy of his to be wearing it in an evening, and the bats in the chapel upstairs are too blind to know what a rebel it is that must be play-acting old days and old styles among them.”
A faint light came suddenly to Count Victor.
“Ah!” said he, “it is not, mademoiselle, that the bats alone are blind; here is a very blind Montaiglon. I implore your pardon, M. le Baron. It is good to be frank, though it is sometimes unpleasant, and I must plead guilty to an imbecile misapprehension.”
Doom flushed, and took the proffered hand.
“My good Montaiglon,” said he, “I'm the most shamefaced man this day in the shire of Argyll. Need I be telling you that I have all Olivia's sentiment and none of her honest courage?”
“My dear father!” cried Olivia fondly, looking with melting eyes at her parent; and Count Victor, too, thought this mummer no inadmirable figure.
“It is nothing more than my indulgence in the tartan that makes your host look sometimes scarcely trustworthy; and my secret got its right punishment this night. I will not be able to wear a kilt with an easy conscience for some time to come.”
“My faith! Baron, that were a penance out of all proportion!” said Count Victor, laughing. “If you nearly gave me the key of the Olympian meadows there, 'tis I that have brought these outlaws about your ears.”
“What beats me is that they should make so much ado about a trifle.”
“A trifle!” said Count Victor. “True, in a sense. The wretch but died. We must all die; we all know it, though none of us believe it.”
“I am glad to say that after all you only wounded yon Macfarlane; so Petullo learned but yesterday, and I clean forgot to tell you sooner.”
Montaiglon looked mightily relieved.
“So!” said he; “I shall give a score of the best candles to St. Denys—if I remember when I get home again. You could not have told me such good tidings a moment too soon, dear M. le Baron, though of course a small affair like that would naturally escape one's memory.”
“He was as good as dead, by all rumour; but being a thief and an Arroquhar man, he naturally recovered: and now it's the oddest thing in the world that an accident of the nature, that is all, as Black Andy well must know, in the ordinary way of business, should bring about so muchfracas.”
“It was part of my delusion,” said Count Victor, “to fancy Mungo not entirely innocent. As you observed, he opened the door with an excess of hospitality.”
“Yes, that was droll,” confessed Doom, reflectively. “That was droll, indeed; but Mungo hates the very name of Arroquhar, and all that comes from it.”
“Except our Annapla,” suggested Olivia, smiling.
“Oh, except Annapla, of course!” said her father. “He's to marry her to avert her Evil Eye.”
“And is she a Macfarlane?” asked Montaiglon, surprised.
“No less,” replied Doom. “She's a cousin of Andy's; but there's little love lost between them.”
“Speaking of bats!” thought Count Victor, but he did not hint at his new conclusions. “Well, I am glad,” said he; “they left me but remorse last time; this time here's a souvenir,” and he showed the button.
It was a silver chamfered lozenge, conspicuous and unforgettable.
“Stolen gear, doubtless,” guessed the Baron, looking at it with indifference. “Silver buttons are not rife between here and the pass of Balmaha.”
“Let me see it, please?” said Olivia.
She took it in her hand but for a moment, turned slightly aside to look more closely at it in the sconce-light, paled with some emotion, and gave it back with slightly trembling fingers.
“I have a headache,” she said suddenly. “I am not so brave as I thought I was; you will let me say good night?”
She smiled to Count Victor with a face most wan.
“My dear, you are like a ghost,” said her father, and as she left the room he looked after her affectionately.
The Boar's Head Inn, for all its fine cognomen, was little better than any of the numerous taverns that kept discreet half-open doors to the wynds and closes of the Duke's burgh town, but custom made it a preserve of the upper class in the community. There it was the writers met their clients and cozened them into costly law pleas over the genial jug or chopine; the through-going stranger took his pack there and dwelt cheaply in the attics that looked upon the bay and upon the little harbour where traffic dozed upon the swinging tide, waiting the goodwill of mariners in no hurry to leave a port so alluring; in its smoke-grimed public-room skippers frequented, full of loud tales of roving, and even the retinue of MacCailen was not averse from an evening's merriment in a company where no restraint of the castle was expected, and his Grace was mentioned but vaguely as a personal pronoun.
There was in the inn asanctum sanctorumwhere only were allowed the bailies of the burgh, a tacksman of position, perhaps, from the landward part, or the like of the Duke's Chamberlain, who was no bacchanal, but loved the company of honest men in their hours of manumission. Here the bottle was of the best, and the conversation most genteel—otherwise there had been no Sim MacTaggart in the company where he reigned the king. It was a state that called for shrewd deportment. One must not be too free, for an excess of freedom cheapened the affability, and yet one must be hail fellow with magistrate—and even an odd master mariner—with no touch of condescension for the Highland among them who could scent the same likeaqua vitoand resent it like a push of the hand.
He came not often, but ever was he welcome, those nights the more glorious for his qualities of humour and generosity, his tales that stirred like the brassy cry of trumpets, his tolerance of the fool and his folly, his fatalist excuse for any sin except the scurviest. And there was the flageolet! You will hear the echo of it yet in that burgh town where he performed; its charm lingers in melodies hummed or piped by old folks of winter nights, its magic has been made the stuff of myth, so that as children we have heard the sound of Simon's instrument in the spring woods when we went there white-hay-gathering, or for fagots for the schoolhouse fire.
A few nights after that thundering canter from the spider's den where Kate Petullo sat amid her coils, the Chamberlain went to wander care among easy hearts. It was a season of mild weather though on the eve of winter; even yet the perfume of the stubble-field and of fruitage in forest and plantation breathed all about the country of Mac-Cailen Mor. Before the windows of the inn the bay lay warm and placid, and Dunchuach, wood-mantled, and the hills beyond it vague, remote, and haunted all by story, seemed to swim in a benign air, and the outer world drew the souls of these men in a tavern into a brief acquaintanceship. The window of the large room they sat in looked out upon this world new lit by the tender moon that hung on Strome. A magistrate made to shutter it and bring the hour of Bacchus all the faster.
“Hold there, Bailie!” cried the Chamberlain. “Good God! let us have so long as we can of a night so clean and wholesome.”
It needed but a hint of that nature from this creature of romance and curious destiny to silence their unprofitable discourse over herds and session discipline, and for a space they sat about the window, surrendered to the beauty of the night. So still that outer world, so vacant of living creature, that it might have been a picture! In the midst of their half circle the Chamberlain lay back in his chair and drank the vision in by gloating eyes.
“Upon my word,” said he at last in a voice that had the rich profound of passion—“upon my word, we are the undeserving dogs!” and at an impulse he took his flageolet and played a Highland air. It had the proper spirit of the hour—the rapturous evening pipe of birds in dewy thickets, serene yet someway touched by melancholy; there was no man there among them who did not in his breast repeat its words that have been heard for generations in hillside milking-folds where women put their ruddy cheeks against the kine and look along the valleys, singing softly to the accompaniment of the gushing pail.
He held his audience by a chain of gold: perhaps he knew it, perhaps he joyed in it, but his half-shut eyes revealed no more than that he still saw the beauty and peace of the night and thus rendered an oblation.
His melody ceased as abruptly as it began. Up he got hastily and stamped his foot and turned to the table where the bottle lay and cried loud out for lights, as one might do ashamed of a womanly weakness, and it is the Highland heart that his friends should like him all the more for that display of sentiment and shyness to confess it.
“By the Lord, Factor, and it's you have the skill of it!” said the Provost, in tones of lofty admiration.
“Is't the bit reed?” said the Chamberlain, indifferently. “Your boy Davie could learn to play better than I in a month's lessons.”
“It's no' altogether the playing though,” said the Provost slowly, ruminating as on a problem; “it's that too, but it's more than that; it's the seizing of the time and tune to play. I'm no great musicianer myself, though I have tried the trump; but there the now—with the night like that, and us like this, and all the rest of it—that lilt of yours—oh, damn! pass the bottle; what for should a man be melancholy?” He poured some wine and gulped it hurriedly.
“Never heard the beat of it!” said the others. “Give us a rant, Factor,” and round the table they gathered: the candles were being lit, the ambrosial night was to begin.
Simon MacTaggart looked round his company—at some with the maudlin tear of sentiment still on their cheeks, at others eager to escape this soft moment and make the beaker clink.
“My sorrow!” thought he, “what a corps to entertain! Is it the same stuff as myself? Is this the best that Sim MacTaggart that knows and feels things can be doing? And still they're worthy fellows, still I must be liking them.”
“Rants!” he cried, and stood among them tall and straight and handsome, with lowering dark brows, and his face more pale than they had known it customarily,—“a little less rant would be the better for us. Take my word for it, the canty quiet lilt in the evening, and the lights low, and calm and honest thoughts with us, is better than all the rant and chorus, and I've tried them both. But heaven forbid that Sim MacTaggart should turn to preaching in his middle age.”
“Faith! and it's very true what you say, Factor,” acquiesced some sycophant.
The Chamberlain looked at him half in pity, half in amusement. “How doyouken, Bailie?” said he; “what are yearlings at Fa'kirk Tryst?” And then, waiting no answer to what demanded none, he put the flageolet to his lips again and began to play a strathspey to which the company in the true bucolic style beat time with feet below the table. He changed to the tune of a minuet, then essayed at a melody more sweet and haunting than them all, but broken ere its finish.
“A hole in the ballant,” commented the Provost. “Have another skelp at it, Factor.”
“Later on perhaps,” said Sim MacTaggart. “The end of it aye escapes my memory. Rather a taking tune, I think—don't you? Just a little—just a little too much of the psalm in it for common everyday use, but man! it grips me curiously;” and then on a hint from one at his shoulder he played “The Devil in the Kitchen,” a dance that might have charmed the imps of Hallowe'en.
He was in the midst of it when the door of the room opened and a beggar looked in—a starven character of the neighbourhood parish, all bedecked with cheap brooches and babs of ribbon, leading by the hand the little child of his daughter wronged and dead. He said never a word but stood just within the door expectant—a reproach to cleanliness, content, good clothes, the well fed, and all who make believe to love their fellows.
“Go away, Baldy!” cried the Bailies sharply, vexed by this intrusion on their moments of carouse; no one of them had a friendly eye for the old wanderer, in his blue coat, and dumb but for his beggar's badge and the child that clung to his hand.
It was the child that Sim MacTaggart saw. He thought of many things as he looked at the little one, white-haired, bare-footed, and large-eyed.
“Come here, my dear!” said he, quite tenderly, smiling upon her.
She would have been afraid but for the manifest kindness of that dark commanding stranger; it was only shyness that kept her from obeying.
The Chamberlain rose and went over to the door and cried upon the landlord. “You will have a chopine of ale, Baldy,” said he to the old wreck; “sometimes it's all the difference between hell-fire and content, and—for God's sake buy the bairn a pair of boots!” As he spoke he slipped, by a motion studiously concealed from the company, some silver into the beggar's poke.
The ale came in, the beggar drank for a moment, the Chamberlain took the child upon his knee, his face made fine and noble by some sweet human sentiment, and he kissed her, ere she went, upon the brow.
For a space thesanctum sanctorumof the Boar's Head Inn was ill at ease. This sort of thing—so common in Sim MacTaggart,who made friends with every gangrel he met—was like a week-day sermon, and they considered the Sunday homilies of Dr. Macivor quite enough. They much preferred their Simon in his more common mood of wild devilry, and nobody knew it better than the gentleman himself.
“Oh, damn the lousy tribe of them!” cried he, beating his palm upon the table; “what's Long Davie the dempster thinking of to be letting such folk come scorning here?”
“I'll warrant they get more encouragement here than they do in Lorn,” said the Provost, shrewdly, for he had seen the glint of coin and knew his man. “You beat all, Factor! If I lived a hundred years, you would be more than I could fathom. Well, well, pass the bottle, and ye might have another skelp at yon tune if it's your pleasure.”
The Chamberlain most willingly complied: it was the easiest retort to the Provost's vague allusion.
He played the tune again; once more its conclusion baffled him, and as he tried a futile repetition Count Victor stood listening in the lobby of the Boar's Head Inn.