The wail of a mountain pipe, poorly played, as any one accustomed to its
strains would have admitted, even if the instrument was one he loved,
and altogether execrable in the ears of Montaiglon, called him to the
_salle_, where Doom joined him in a meal whereof good Mungo's jugged
hare formed no part. Mungo, who had upheld ancient ceremony by his crude
performance on the _piob mhor_, was the attendant upon the table,--an
office he undertook with his bonnet on his head, “in token,” as his
master whisperingty explained to Count Victor, “of his sometimes
ill-informed purpose of conducting every formal task in Doom upon the
strict letter of military codes as pertained in camps, garrisons,
and strongholds.” It was amusing to witness the poor fellow's pompous
precision of movement as he stood behind his master's chair or helped
the guest to his humble meal; the rigidity of his inactive moments, or
the ridiculous jerkiness with which he passed a platter as 'twere to the
time of a drill-sergeant's baton. More amusing still to one able, like
Count Victor, to enter into the humour of the experience, was it to have
his garrulity get the better of him in spite of the military punctilio.
“The Baron was telling me aboot your exploit wi' the Loch Sloy pairty.
Man! did I no' think ye had come by boat,” he whispered over a tendered
ale-glass. “It was jist my luck to miss sic a grand ploy. I wad hae
backed ye to haud the water against Black Andy and all his clan, and
they're no' slack at a tulzie.”
“Ye may be grand in a fight, Mungo, but only a middling man at forage,”
interrupted his master. “I think ye said jugged hare?”
“It wasna my faut,” explained the domestic, “that ye havena what was
steepulated; the Baron wadna bide till the beast was cooked.”
Doom laughed. “Come, come, Mungo,” said he, “the Count could scarcely
be expected to wait for the cooking of an animal running wild in the
bracken twenty minutes ago.”
“Oh, it disna tak' sae terrible lang to cook a hare,” said the unabashed
retainer.
“But was it a hare after a', Mungo?” asked his master. “Are ye sure it
wasna a rabbit?”
“A rabbit!” cried he in astonishment; then more cautiously, “Weel, if it
was a rabbit, it was a gey big ane, that's a' I can say,” and he covered
his perturbation by a retreat from the room to resume his office of
musician, which, it appeared, demanded a tune after dinner as well as
before it.
What had seemed to Montaiglon a harsh, discordant torturing of reeds
when heard on the stair outside his chamber, seemed somehow more
mellowed and appropriate--pleasing even--when it came from the garden
outside the castle, on whose grass-grown walk the little lowlander
strutted as he played the evening melody of the house of Doom--a pibroch
all imbued with passion and with melancholy. This distance lulled it
into something more than human music, into a harmony with the monotone
of the wave that thundered against the rock; it seemed the voice of
choiring mermen; it had the bitterness, the agonised remembrance, of the
sea's profound; it was full of hints of stormy nights and old wars. For
a little Doom and his visitor sat silent listening to it, the former,
with a strain upon his countenance, tapping nervously with his fingers
upon the arm of his chair.
“An old custom in the Highlands,” he explained. “I set, perhaps, too
little store by it myself, but Mungo likes to maintain it, though he
plays the pipe but indifferently, and at this distance you might think
the performance not altogether without merit.
“I love all music,” replied Count Victor with polite ambiguity, and he
marvelled at the signs of some deep feeling in his host.
Till a late hour they sat together while Count Victor explained his
mission to the Highlands. He told much, but, to be sure, he did not
at first tell all. He recounted the evidences of the spy's guilt as
a correspondent with the British Government, whose pay he drew while
sharing the poor fortunes and the secrets of the exiled Jacobites.
“Iscariot, my dear Baron,” he protested, “was a Bayard compared with
this wretch. His presence in your locality should pollute the air; have
you not felt a malaise?”
“It's dooms hard,” admitted the Baron, throwing up distressed hands,
“but, man, I'm feared he's not the only one. Do you know, I could
mention well-kent names far ben in the Cause--men not of hereabouts at
all, but of Lochaber no less, though you may perhaps not guess all that
means--and they're in Paris up to the elbow now in the same trade. It's
well known to some of yourselves, or should be, and it puzzles me that
you should come to the shire of Argyll on account of one, as I take it,
no worse than three or four you might have found by stepping across the
road to Roisin's coffee-house in the Rue Vaugirard. The commoners in
the late troubles have been leal enough, I'll give them that credit, but
some of the gentry wag their tongues for Prince Tearlach and ply their
pens for Geordie's pay.”
The servant came in with two candles, placed them on the table, and
renewed the fire. He had on a great woollen night-cowl of gaudy hue with
a superb tassel that bobbed grotesquely over his beady eyes.
“I'll awa' to my bed, if it's your will, Baron,” said he with the
customary salute. “I was thinkin' it might be needful for me to bide up
a while later in case ony o' the Coont's freends cam' the way; but the
tide'll keep them aff till mornin' anyway, and I'm sure we'll meet
them a' the baulder then if we hae a guid sleep.” He got permission to
retire, and passed into the inky darkness of the corridor, and crept to
that part of the vacant dwelling in which he had his bed.
“There might be another reason for my coming here,” said Montaiglon,
resuming the conversation where Mungo's entrance had broken it off. “In
this affair there was a lady. I knew her once.” He paused with a manner
showing discomposure.
“And there was liking; I can comprehend,” said Doom with sympathy.
“Liking is but love without wings,” said Montaiglon. “My regard soared
above the clay; I loved her, and I think she was not indifferent to me
till this man came in her way. He had, they say, the devil's tongue;
at least he had the devil's heart, and she died six months ago with her
head on my arm. I could tell you the story, M. le Baron, but it is
in all the books, and you can fancy it easily. She died forgiving her
betrayer, and sending a message to that effect by me. I come to deliver
it, and, by God! to push it to his heart.”
“It is a dangerous errand in this country and at this time,” said Doom,
looking into the fire.
“Ah! but you did not know Cecile,” replied Montaiglon, simply.
“But I know the human heart. I know it in any man under the sober age of
thirty. Better to let it rest thus. Excuse my interference. It does
not matter much to me that it should be out of my house you should go
seeking for your vengeance, but I'm an older man than you, and have
learned how quickly the worst misfortunes and wrongs may be forgotten.
In your place I would leave this man to the punishment of his own
conscience.”
Montaiglon laughed bitterly. “That,” said he, “is to assume a mechanism
that in his case never existed. Pardon me, I pray you, but I prefer
the old reckoning, which will be all the fairer because he has the
reputation of being a good swordsman, and I am not without some
practice.”
“And the man's name? you have not mentioned it.”
“But there you puzzle me. He was eight months in France, six of these in
a lodging beside the Baigneurs on the Estrapade, Rue Dauphine. He came
with no credentials but from Glengarry, and now Glengarry can give no
account of him except that he had spoken familiarly to him of common
friends in the Highlands.”
“Oh, Glengarry--Alasdair Rhuadh!” exclaimed the Baron, dryly.
“And presumed to be burdened with a dangerous name, he passed with the
name of Drimdarroch.”
“Drimdarroch!” repeated the Baron with some apparent astonishment.
“I have never seen the man, so far as I know, for I was at Cammercy when
he hung about the lady.”
“Drimdarroch!” repeated Doom reflectively, “a mere land title.”
“And some words he dropped in the ear of the lady made me fancy he might
be found about the Court of Argyll.”
“Drimdarroch! Drimdarroch! I ken no one of the name, though the name
itself, for very good reasons, is well known to me. Have you any
description of the man?”
“Not much. A man older than myself, dark, well-bred. I should say a man
something like yourself, if you will pardon the comparison, with a less
easy mind, if he remembers his friends and his past.”
Doom pushed back his chair a little from the fire, but without taking
his eyes from the peats, and made a curious suggestion.
“You would not take it to be me, would you?” he asked.
Count Victor laughed, with a gesture of his hands that made denial all
unnecessary.
“Oh, but you do not know,” went on the Baron. “Some months of caballing
with our friends--even our Hielan' friends--in the France, left me with
an unwholesome heart that would almost doubt my father in his grave. You
mentioned the name Drimdarroch--is it not the odd thing that you should
speak it to the only man in the shire that ever had the right to use it?
Do you see this?” and rising he stepped to a recess in the wall, only
half curtained, so that its contents overflowed into the chamber, and by
a jerk of the hand revealed a strange accumulation of dusty documents in
paper and in parchment. He looked at them with an aspect of disgust, and
stirred them with a contemptuous toe as if he meddled with the litter of
a stye.
“That's Drimdarroch!” said he, intensely bitter; “that's Drimdarroch,
and Duntorvil, that's the Isles, the bonny Isles of Lochow; that's damn
like to be Doom too! That and this ruckle of stones we sit in are all
that's left of what was my father's and my grandfather's and their
forebears back till the dark of time. And how is it, ye may ask? Let us
pretermit the question till another occasion; anyway here's Drimdarroch
wi' the lave, at any rate the weight of it in processes, records,
caveats, multiple poindings, actions of suspension and declator, interim
decrees, fugie warrants, compts, and reckonings--God! I have the cackle
of the law in my head like a ballant, and what's the wonder at that wi'
all my practice?”
He stooped and picked up from the confused heap of legal scrivenings by
finger-tips that seemed to fear infection a parchment fouled with its
passage through the courts and law offices. “You're in luck indeed,”
said he; “for there's Drimdarroch--all that's left of it to me: the land
itself is in the hands of my own doer, Petullo the writer down-by, and
scab seize his bestial!”
Back he threw the relic of his patrimony; he dropped the curtain; he
turned on his guest a face that tried to smile. “Come, let us sit down
again,” he said, “and never heed my havers. Am I not thankful to have
Doom itself left me, and the company of the hills and sea? After all,
there are more Drimdarrochs than one in the Highlands, for the name
means just 'the place at the back of the oak-wood or the oaken shaw,'
and oaks are as plentiful hereabout as the lawyers are in the burgh
down-by. I but mentioned it to show you the delicacy of your search, for
you do not know but what I'm the very man you want, though I'm sitting
here looking as if acting trusty for the Hanoverian cause did not fill
my pouches.”
“_Tenez!_ M. Bethune was scarcely like to send me to Doom in that case,”
said the Count laughing.
“But Bethune, like yourself, may never have seen the man.”
“But yes, it is true, he did not see him any more than I did.
Drimdarroch, by all accounts, was a spendthrift, a player, a _bavard_,
his great friends, Glengarry and another Scot, Balhaldie--”
“Oh, Balhaldie! blethering Balhaldie!” cried Doom, contempt upon his
countenance. “And Balhaldie would sell him, I'll warrant. He seems, this
Drimdarroch, to have been dooms unlucky in his friends. I say all I've
said to you, Count, because you're bound to find it out for yourself
some day if you prosecute your search here, and you might be coming
round to me at last with your ower-ready pistol when I was ill-prepared
to argue out my identity. Furthermore, I do not know the man you want.
About the castle down-by his Grace has a corps of all kinds that you
might pick from nine times out of ten without striking an honest man.
Some of them are cadets of his own family, always blunt opponents of
mine and of our cause here and elsewhere; some are incomers, as we call
them; a few of them from clans apparently friendly to us when in other
quarters, but traitors and renegades at the heart; some are spies by
habit and repute. There's not a friend of mine among them, not in all
the fat and prosperous rabble of them; but I wish you were here on
another errand, though to Doom, my poor place, you are welcome. I am a
widower, a lonely man, with my own flesh and blood rebel against me”--he
checked his untimeous confidence--“and yet I have been chastened by
years and some unco experiences from a truculent man to one preferring
peace except at the last ditch.”
“_Eh bien!_ Monsieur; _this_ is the last ditch!” said Montaiglon. “Spy
and murderer, M. le Baron, and remember I propose to give him more than
the murderer's chance when I agree to meet him on a fair field with a
sword in his hand.”
“I have seen you lunge, sir,” said Doom meaningly; “I ken the carriage
of a fencer's head; your eye's fast, your step's light; with the sword
I take it Drimdarroch is condemned, and your practice with the pistol,
judging from the affair with the Macfarlanes, seems pretty enough. You
propose, or I'm mistaken, to make yourself the executioner. It is a step
for great deliberation, and for the sake of a wanton woman--”
“Sir!” cried Montaiglon, half rising in his chair.
Doom's eyes gleamed, a quiver ran over his brow, and a furrow came to
the jaw; his hand went to his side, where in other days there might
have been a dagger. It was the flash of a moment, and died again almost
before Montaiglon had seen and understood.
“_Mille pardons!_” said Doom with uncouth French. “I used the word in
its most innocent sense, with its kindliest meaning; but I was a fool to
use it at all, and I withdraw it.”
Count Victor bowed his head. “So,” said he. “Perhaps I am too much
Quixote, for I saw her but a few times, and that briefly. She was like
a--like a fine air once heard, not all to be remembered, never wholly to
be forgot. She had a failing, perhaps--the error of undue affection to
qualify her for a sinful world. As it was, she seemed among other women
some rarity out of place--Venus at a lantern feast.”
“And ye would send this man to hell that he may find his punishment in
remembering her? If I thought so much of vengeance I would leave him on
the earth forgetting.”
“M. le Baron, I make you my compliments of your complacence,” said Count
Victor, rising to his feet and desirous to end the discussion. “I
am only Victor de Montaiglon, poorly educated in the forgiveness of
treachery, and lamentably incapable of the nobihty _de cour_ that you
profess. But I can be grateful; and if you give me the hospitality of
your house for a day or two, I shall take care that neither it nor its
owner will be implicated in my little affair. Touching retirement “--he
went on with a smile--“I regret exceedingly an overpowering weariness.
I have travelled since long before dawn, and burning the candle _par
les deux bouts_ is not, as Master Mungo hints, conducive to a vigorous
reception of the Macfarlanes if they feel like retaliating to-morrow,
and making your domicile the victim of my impetuosity and poor
marksmanship.”
Doom sighed, took up a candle, and led the way into the passage. A chill
air was in the corridor, that smelled like a cellar underground, and
as their footsteps sounded reverberant upon the flags uncar-peted, Doom
Castle gave the stranger the impression of a vault. Fantastic shadows
danced macabre in the light of the candles; they were the only furniture
of that part of the rough dwelling that the owner shuffled through
as quickly as he could to save his guest from spying too closely the
barrenness of the land. He went first to the outer door with the candle
before he said good night, drew back great bars, and opened the oak. The
sky was studded with pale golden stars; the open air was dense with the
perfume of the wood, the saline indication of the sea-ware. On the rocky
edge of the islet at one part showed the white fringe of the waves now
more peaceful; to the north brooded enormous hills, seen dimly by the
stars, couchant terrors, vague, vast shapes of dolours and alarms. Doom
stood long looking at them with the flame of the candle blowing
inward and held above his head--a mysterious man beyond Montaiglon's
comprehension. He stood behind him a pace or two, shivering in the
evening air.
“You'll be seeing little there, I'll warrant, Count, but a cold night
and inhospitable vacancy, hard hills and the robber haunting them. For
me, that prospect is my evening prayer. I cannot go to sleep without
it, for fear I wake in Paradise and find it's all by with Doom and the
native hills for me.”
And by that he seemed to Montaiglon more explicable: it was the lover
he was; the sentimentalist, the poet, knowing the ancient secret of the
animate earth, taking his hills and valleys passionately to his heart.
The Frenchman bowed his sympathy and understanding.
“It's a wonder Mungo kept his word and went to bed,” said the Baron,
recovering his ordinary manner, “for it would just suit his whim to bide
up and act sentry here, very well pleased at the chance your coming gave
him of play-acting the man of war.”
He bolted the door again with its great bars, then gravely preceded his
guest to the foot of the turret stair, where he handed him the candle.
“You're in a dreary airt of the house,” he said apologetically, “but I
hope you may find it not uncomfortable. Doom is more than two-thirds
but empty shell, and the bats have the old chapel above you. _Oidhche
mhath!_ Good night!” He turned upon his heel and was gone into the
farther end of the passage.
As Montaiglon went up to his room, the guttering candle flame, puffed
at by hidden and mischievous enemies from broken ports and gun-slits,
showed upon the landing lower than his own a long corridor he had not
observed upon his first ascent. With the candle held high above his head
he glanced into the passage, that seemed to have several doors on either
hand. In a castle so sparsely occupied the very knowledge of this
long and empty corridor in the neighbourhood of his sleeping apartment
conferred a sense of chill and mystery. He thought he could perceive the
odour of damp, decayed wood, crumbled lime, hanging rotten in stagnant
airs and covered with the dust of years. “_Dieu!_” he exclaimed
involuntarily, “this is no Cammercy.” He longed for some relief from the
air of mystery and dread that hung about the place. A laugh would have
been a revelation, a strain of song a miracle of healing. And all at
once he reflected upon the Annapla as yet unseen.
“These might be her quarters,” he reflected, finding a solace in
the thought. The chill was at once less apparent, a pleasant glow of
companionship came over him. Higher up he held the light to see the
farther into the long passage, and as he did so the flame was puffed
out. It seemed so human a caprice that he drew himself sharply against
the wall, ready by instinct to evade any rush or thrust that was to
follow. And then he smiled at his own alarm at a trick of the wind
through some of La-mond's ill-patched walls, and found his consolation
in the sense of companionship confirmed by sight of a thin line of light
below a door mid-way up the curious passage.
“Annapla, for a louis!” he thought cheerfully. “Thank heaven for one
petticoat in Doom--though that, in truth, is to concede the lady but a
scanty wardrobe.” And he hummed softly as he entered his own room.
Wearied exceedingly by the toils of the day, he had no sooner thrown
himself upon the bed than he slept with no need for the lullaby aid of
the sea that rumoured light and soothingly round the rock of Doom.