Nobody who had acquaintance with Victor de Montaiglon would call
him coward. He had fought with De Grammont, and brought a wound from
Dettingen under circumstances to set him up for life in a repute for
valour, and half a score of duels were at his credit or discredit in the
chronicles of Paris society.
And yet, somehow, standing there in an unknown country beside a brute
companion wantonly struck down by a robber's shot, and the wood so
still around, and the thundering sea so unfamiliar, he felt vastly
uncomfortable, with a touch of more than physical apprehension. If the
enemy would only manifest themselves to the eye and ear as well as to
the unclassed senses that inform the instinct, it would be much more
comfortable. Why did they not appear? Why did they not follow up their
assault upon his horse? Why were they lurking in the silence of the
thicket, so many of them, and he alone and so obviously at their mercy?
The pistols he held provided the answer.
“What a rare delicacy!” said Count Victor, applying himself to the
release of his mail from the saddle whereto it was strapped. “They would
not interrupt my regretful tears. But for the true élan of the trade of
robbery, give me old Cartouche picking pockets on the Pont Neuf.”
While he loosened the bag with one hand, with the other he directed at
the thicket one of the pistols that seemed of such wholesome influence.
Then he slung the bag upon his shoulder and encouraged the animal to get
upon its legs, but vainly, for the shot was fatal.
“Ah!” said he regretfully, “I must sacrifice my bridge and my good
comrade. This is an affair!”
Twice--three times, he placed the pistol at the horse's head and as
often withdrew it, reluctant, a man, as all who knew him wondered at,
gentle to womanliness with a brute, though in a cause against men the
most bitter and sometimes cruel of opponents.
A rustle in the brake at last compelled him. “Allons!” said he
impatiently with himself, “I do no more than I should have done with me
in the like case,” and he pulled the trigger.
Then having deliberately charged the weapon anew, he moved off in the
direction he had been taking when the attack was made.
It was still, he knew, some distance to the castle. Half an hour before
his rencontre with those broken gentry, now stealing in his rear with
the cunning and the bloodthirstiness of their once native wolves (and
always, remember, with the possibility of the blunderbuss for aught that
he could tell), he had, for the twentieth time since he left the port of
Dysart, taken out the rude itinerary, written in ludicrous Scoto-English
by Hugh Bethune, one time secretary to the Lord Marischal in exile, and
read:--
... and so on to the Water of Leven (the brewster-wife at the howff near
Loch Lomond mouth keeps a good glass of _aqua_) then by Luss (with an
eye on the Gregarach), there after a bittock to Glencroe and down upon
the House of Ardkinglas, a Hanoverian rat whom 'ware. Round the loch
head and three miles further the Castle o' the Baron. Give him my
devoirs and hopes to challenge him to a Bowl when Yon comes off which
God kens there seems no hurry.
By that showing the castle of Baron Lamond must be within half an hour's
walk of where he now moved without show of eagerness, yet quickly none
the less, from a danger the more alarming because the extent of it could
not be computed.
In a little the rough path he followed bent parallel with the sea. A
tide at the making licked ardently upon sand-spits strewn with ware,
and at the forelands, overhung by harsh and stunted seaside shrubs, the
breakers rose tumultuous. On the sea there was utter vacancy; only a
few screaming birds slanted above the wave, and the coast, curving far
before him, gave his eye no sign at first of the castle to which he had
got the route from M. Hugh Bethune.
Then his vision, that had been set for something more imposing, for the
towers and embrasures of a stately domicile, if not for a Chantilly, at
least for the equal of the paternal château in the Meuse valley, with
multitudinous chimneys and the incense of kind luxuriant hearths,
suave parks, gardens, and gravelled walks, contracted with dubiety and
amazement upon a dismal tower perched upon a promontory.
Revealed against the brown hills and the sombre woods of the farther
coast, it was scarcely a wonder that his eye had failed at first to find
it. Here were no pomps of lord or baron; little luxuriance could prevail
behind those eyeless gables; there could be no suave pleasance about
those walls hanging over the noisy and inhospitable wave. No pomp, no
pleasant amenities; the place seemed to jut into the sea, defying man's
oldest and most bitter enemy, its gable ends and one crenelated bastion
or turret betraying its sinister relation to its age, its whole aspect
arrogant and unfriendly, essential of war. Caught suddenly by the
vision that swept the fretted curve of the coast, it seemed blackly
to perpetuate the spirit of the land, its silence, its solitude and
terrors.
These reflections darted through the mind of Count Victor as he sped,
monstrously uncomfortable with the burden of the bag that bobbed on his
back, not to speak of the indignity of the office. It was not the kind
of castle he had looked for, but a castle, in the narrow and squalid
meaning of a penniless refugee like Bethune, it doubtless was, the only
one apparent on the landscape, and therefore too obviously the one he
sought.
“Very well, God is good!” said Count Victor, who, to tell all and
leave no shred of misunderstanding, was in some regards the frankest of
pagans, and he must be jogging on for its security.
But as he hurried, the ten broken men who had been fascinated by his too
ostentatious fob and the extravagance of his embroidery, and inspired
furthermore by a natural detestation of any foreign _duine uasail_
apparently bound for the seat of MacCailen Mor, gathered boldness, and
soon he heard the thicket break again behind him.
He paused, turned sharply with the pistols in his hands. Instantly
the wood enveloped his phantom foes; a bracken or two nodded, a hazel
sapling swung back and forward more freely than the wind accounted for.
And at the same time there rose on the afternoon the wail of a wild fowl
high up on the hill, answered in a sharp and querulous too-responsive
note of the same character in the wood before.
The gentleman who had twice fought _à la barrière_ felt a nameless new
thrill, a shudder of the being, born of antique terrors generations
before his arms were quartered with those of Rochefoucauld and Modene.
It was becoming all too awkward, this affair. He broke into a more rapid
walk, then into a run, with his eyes intent upon the rude dark keep that
held the promontory, now the one object in all the landscape that had to
his senses some aspect of human fellowship and sympathy.
The caterans were assured; _Dieu du ciel_, how they ran too! Those in
advance broke into an appalling halloo, the shout of hunters on the
heels of quarry. High above the voice of the breakers it sounded savage
and alarming in the ears of Count Victor, and he fairly took to flight,
the valise bobbing more ludicrously than ever on his back.
It was like the man that, in spite of dreads not to be concealed from
himself, he should be seized as he sped with a notion of the grotesque
figure he must present, carrying that improper burden. He must even
laugh when he thought of his, austere punctilious maternal aunt, the
Baronne de Chenier, and fancied her horror and disgust could she behold
her nephew disgracing the De Chenier blood by carrying his own
baggage and outraging several centuries of devilishly fine history by
running--positively running--from ill-armed footpads who had never worn
breeches. She would frown, her bosom would swell till her bodice would
appear to crackle at the armpits, the seven hairs on her upper lip would
bristle all the worse against her purpling face as she cried it was
the little Lyons shopkeeper in his mother's grandfather that was in
his craven legs. Doubt it who will, an imminent danger will not wholly
dispel the sense of humour, and Montàiglon, as he ran before the
footpads, laughed softly at the Baronne.
But a short knife with a black hilt hissed past his right ear and buried
three-fourths of its length in the grass, and so abruptly spoiled the
comedy. This was ridiculous. He stopped suddenly, turned him round about
in a passion, and fired one of the pistols at an unfortunate robber too
late to duck among the bracken. And the marvel was that the bullet found
its home, for the aim was uncertain, and the shot meant more for an
emphatic protest than for attack.
The gled's cry rose once more, rose higher on the hill, echoed far off,
and was twice repeated nearer head with a drooping melancholy cadence.
Gaunt forms grew up straight among the undergrowth of trees, indifferent
to the other pistol, and ran back or over to where the wounded comrade
lay.
“Heaven's thunder!” cried Count Victor, “I wish I had aimed more
carefully.” He was appalled at the apparent tragedy of his act. A
suicidal regret and curiosity kept him standing where he fired, with the
pistol still smoking in his hand, till there came from the men clustered
round the body in the brake a loud simultaneous wail unfamiliar to his
ear, but unmistakable in its import. He turned and ran wildly for the
tower that had no aspect of sanctuary in it; his heart drummed noisily
at his breast; his mouth parched and gaped. Upon his lips in a little
dropped water; he tasted the salt of his sweating body. And then he knew
weariness, great weariness, that plucked at the sinews behind his knees,
and felt sore along the hips and back, the result of his days of hard
riding come suddenly to the surface. Truly he was not happy.
But if he ran wearily he ran well, better at least than his pursuers,
who had their own reasons for taking it more leisurely, and in a while
there was neither sight nor sound of the enemy.
He was beginning to get some satisfaction from this, when, turning
a bend of the path within two hundred yards of the castle, behold an
unmistakable enemy barred his way!--an ugly, hoggish, obese man, with
bare legs most grotesquely like pillars of granite, and a protuberant
paunch; but the devil must have been in his legs to carry him more
swiftly than thoroughbred limbs had borne Count Victor. He stood
sneering in the path, turning up the right sleeve of a soiled and ragged
saffron shirt with his left hand, the right being engaged most ominously
with a sword of a fashion that might well convince the Frenchman he had
some new methods of fence to encounter in a few minutes.
High and low looked Count Victor as he slacked his pace, seeking for
some way out of this sack, releasing as he did so the small sword from
the tanglement of his skirts, feeling the Mechlin deucedly in his way.
As he approached closer to the man barring his path he relapsed into
a walk and opened a parley in English that except for the slightest of
accents had nothing in it of France, where he had long been the comrade
of compatriots to this preposterous savage with the manners of medieval
Provence when footpads lived upon Damoiselle Picoree.
“My good fellow,” said he airily, as one might open with a lackey,
“I protest I am in a hurry, for my presence makes itself much desired
elsewhere. I cannot comprehend why in Heaven's name so large a regiment
of you should turn out to one unfortunate traveller.”
The fat man fondled the brawn of his sword-arm and seemed to gloat upon
the situation.
“Come, come!” said Count Victor, affecting a cheerfulness, “my waistcoat
would scarcely adorn a man of your inches, and as for my pantaloons”--he
looked at the ragged kilt--“as for my pantaloons, now on one's honour,
would you care for them? They are so essentially a matter of custom.”
He would have bantered on in this strain up to the very nose of the
enemy, but the man in his path was utterly unresponsive to his humour.
In truth he did not understand a word of the nobleman's pleasantry. He
uttered something like a war-cry, threw his bonnet off a head as bald as
an egg, and smote out vigorously with his broadsword.
Count Victor fired the pistol _à bout portant_ with deliberation; the
flint, in the familiar irony of fate, missed fire, and there was nothing
more to do with the treacherous weapon but to throw it in the face of
the Highlander. It struck full; the trigger-guard gashed the jaw and the
metalled butt spoiled the sight of an eye.
“This accounts for the mace in the De Chenier quartering,” thought the
Count whimsically. “It is obviously the weapon of the family.” And he
drew the rapier forth.
A favourite, a familiar arm, as the carriage of his head made clear at
any time, he knew to use it with the instinct of the eyelash, but
it seemed absurdly inadequate against the broad long weapon of his
opponent, who had augmented his attack with a dirk drawn in the left
hand, and sought lustily to bring death to his opponent by point as well
as edge. A light dress rapier obviously must do its business quickly
if it was not to suffer from the flailing blow of the claymore, and yet
Count Victor did not wish to increase the evil impression of his first
visit to this country by a second homicide, even in self-defence. He
measured the paunched rascal with a rapid eye, and with a flick at the
left wrist disarmed him of his poignard. Furiously the Gael thrashed
with the sword, closing up too far on his opponent. Count Victor broke
ground, beat an appeal that confused his adversary, lunged, and skewered
him through the thick of the active arm.
The Highlander dropped his weapon and bawled lamentably as he tried to
staunch the copious blood; and safe from his further interference, Count
Victor took to his heels again.
Where the encounter with the obese and now discomfited Gael took place
was within a hundred yards of the castle, whose basement and approach
were concealed by a growth of stunted whin. Towards the castle Count
Victor rushed, still hearing the shouts in the wood behind, and as he
seemed, in spite of his burden, to be gaining ground upon his pursuers,
he was elate at the prospect of escape. In his gladness he threw a
taunting cry behind, a hunter's greenwood challenge.
And then he came upon the edge of the sea. The sea! _Peste!_ That he
should never have thought of that! There was the castle, truly,
beetling against the breakers, very cold, very arrogant upon its barren
promontory. He was not twenty paces from its walls, and yet it might as
well have been a league away, for he was cut off from it by a natural
moat of sea-water that swept about it in yeasty little waves. It rode
like a ship, oddly independent of aspect, self-contained, inviolable,
eternally apart, for ever by nature indifferent to the mainland, where a
Montaiglon was vulgarly quarrelling with _sans culottes_.
For a moment or two he stood bewildered. There was no drawbridge to this
eccentric moat; there was, on this side of the rock at least, not so
little as a boat; if Lamond ever held intercourse with the adjacent isle
of Scotland he must seemingly swim. Very well; the Count de Montaiglon,
guilty of many outrages against his ancestry to-day, must swim too
if that were called for. And it looked as if that were the only
alternative. Vainly he called and whistled; no answer came from the
castle, that he might have thought a deserted ruin if a column of smoke
did not rise from some of its chimneys.
It was his one stroke of good fortune that for some reason the pursuit
was no longer apparent. The dim woods behind seemed to have swallowed
up sight and sound of the broken men, who, at fault, were following up
their quarry to the castle of Mac-Cailen Mor instead of to that of Baron
Lamond. He had therefore time to prepare himself for his next step. He
sat on the shore and took off his elegant long boots, the quite charming
silk stockings so unlike travel in the wilds; then looked dubiously at
his limbs and at the castle. No! manifestly, an approach so frank was
not to be thought of, and he compromised by unbuttoning the foot of his
pantaloons and turning them over his knees. In any case, if one had to
swim over that yeasty and alarming barrier, his clothing must get wet.
_À porte basse, passant courbé_. He would wade as far as he could, and
if he must, swim the rest.
With the boots and the valise and the stockings and the skirts of
his coat tucked high in his arms, the Count waded into the tide, that
chilled deliciously after the heat of his flight.
But it was ridiculous! It was the most condemnable folly! His face
burned with shame as he found himself half-way over the channel and the
waves no higher than his ankles. It was to walk through a few inches of
water that he had nearly stripped to nature!
And a woman was laughing at him, _morbleu!_ Decidedly a woman was
laughing--a young woman, he could wager, with a monstrously musical
laugh, by St. Denys! and witnessing (though he could not see her even
had he wished) this farce from an upper window of the tower. He stood
for a moment irresolute, half inclined to retreat from the ridicule that
never failed to affect him more unpleasantly than danger the most dire;
his face and neck flamed; he forgot all about the full-bosomed Baronne
or remembered her only to agree that nobility demanded some dignity even
in fleeing from an enemy. But the shouts of the pursuers that had died
away in the distance grew again in the neighbourhood, and he pocketed
his diffidence and resumed his boots, then sought the entrance to a
dwelling that had no hospitable portal to the shore.
Close at hand the edifice gained in austerity and dignity while it lost
the last of its scanty air of hospitality. Its walls were of a rough
rubble of granite and whinstone, grown upon at the upper storeys
with grasses and weeds wafted upon the ledges by the winds that blow
indifferent, bringing the green messages of peace from God. A fortalice
dark and square-built, flanked to the southern corner by a round turret,
lit by few windows, and these but tiny and suspicious, it was as Scots
and arrogant as the thistle that had pricked Count Victor's feet when
first he set foot upon the islet.
A low wall surrounded a patch of garden-ground to the rear, one corner
of it grotesquely adorned with a bower all bedraggled with rains, yet
with the red berry of the dog-rose gleaming in the rusty leafage like
grapes of fire. He passed through the little garden and up to the door.
Its arch, ponderous, deep-moulded, hung a scowling eyebrow over the
black and studded oak, and over all was an escutcheon with a blazon of
hands fess-wise and castles embattled and the legend--
“Doom
Man behauld the end of All.
Be nocht Wiser than the Priest.
Hope in God”
He stood on tiptoe to read the more easily the time-blurred characters,
his baggage at his feet, his fingers pressed against the door. Some of
the words he could not decipher nor comprehend, but the first was plain
to his understanding.
“Doom!” said he airily and half aloud. “Doom! _Quelle félicité!_ It is
an omen.”
Then he rapped lightly on the oak with the pommel of his sword.