It was difficult for Count Victor, when he went abroad in the morning,
to revive in memory the dreary and mysterious impressions of his
arrival; and the melody he had heard so often half-completed in the dark
waste and hollow of the night was completely gone from his recollection,
leaving him only the annoying sense of something on the tongue's-tip, as
we say, but as unattainable as if it had never been heard. As he walked
upon a little knoll that lay between the seaside of the castle and the
wave itself, he found an air of the utmost benignity charged with the
odours of wet autumn woodlands in a sunshine. And the sea stretched
serene; the mists that had gathered in the night about the hills were
rising like the smoke of calm hearths into a sky without a cloud. The
castle itself, for all its natural arrogance and menace, had something
pleasant in its aspect looked at from this small eminence, where the
garden did not display its dishevelment and even the bedraggled bower
seen from the rear had a look of trim' composure.
To add to the morning's cheerfulness Mungo was afoot whistling a ballad
air of the low country, with a regard for neither time nor tune in his
puckered lips as he sat on a firkin-head at an outhouse door and gutted
some fish he had caught with his own hands in a trammel net at the
river-mouth before Montaiglon was awake and the bird, as the Gaelic
goes, had drunk the water.
“Gude mornin' to your honour,” he cried with an elaborately flourished
salute as Montaiglon sauntered up to him. “Ye're early on the move,
Monsher; a fine caller mornin'. I hope ye sleepit weel; it was a gowsty
nicht.”
In spite of his assumed indifference and the purely casual nature of
his comment upon the night, there was a good deal of cunning, thought
Montaiglon, in the beady eyes of him, but the stranger only smiled at
the ease of those Scots domestic manners.
“I did very well, I thank you,” said he. “My riding and all the rest
of it yesterday would have made me sleep soundly inside the drum of a
marching régiment.”
“That's richt, that's richt,” said Mungo, ostentatiously handling
the fish with the awkward repugnance of one unaccustomed to a task so
menial, to prove perhaps that cleansing them was none of his accustomed
office. “That's richt. When we were campaignin' wi' Marlborough oor lads
had many a time to sleep wi' the cannon dirlin' aboot them. Ye get us'd
to't, ye get us'd to't, as Annapla says aboot bein' a weedow woman.
And if ye hae noticed it, Coont, there's nae people mair adapted for
fechtin' under diffeeculties than oor ain; that's what maks the Scots
the finest sogers in the warld. It's the build o' them, 'Lowlan' or
'Hielan', the breed o' them; the dour hard character o' their country
and their mainner o' leevin'. We gied the English a fleg at the
'Forty-five,' didnae we? That was where the tartan cam' in: man, there's
naethin' like us!”
“You do not speak like a Highlander,” said Montaiglon, finding some of
this gasconade unintelligible.
“No, I'm no' exactly a'thegether a Hielan'man,” Mungo admitted, “though
I hae freends con-nekit wi' the auldest clans, and though I'm, in a
mainner o' speakin', i' the tail o' Doom, as I was i' the tail o' his
faither afore him--peace wi' him, he was the grand soger!--but Hielan'
or Lowland, we gied them their scuds at the 'Forty-five.' Scots
regiments, sir, a' the warld ower, hae had the best o't for fechtin',
marchin', or glory. See them at the auld grand wars o' Sweden wi'
Gus-tavus, was there ever the like o' them? Or in your ain country,
whaure's the bate o' the Gairde Ecossay, as they ca't?”
He spoke with such a zest, he seemed to fire with such a martial glow,
that Montaiglon began to fancy that this amusing grotesque, who in
stature came no higher than his waist, might have seen some service as
sutler or groom in a campaigning regiment.
“_Ma foi!_” he exclaimed, with his surprise restrained from the most
delicate considerations for the little man's feelings; “have you been in
the wars?”
It was manifestly a home-thrust to Mungo. He had risen, in his moment
of braggadocio, and was standing over the fish with a horn-hilted
gutting-knife in his hands, that were sanguine with his occupation, and
he had, in the excess of his feeling, made a flourish of the knife,
as if it were a dagger, when Montaiglon's query checked him. He was
a bubble burst, his backbone--that braced him to the tension of a
cuirassier of guards--melted into air, into thin air, and a ludicrous
limpness came on him, while his eye fell, and confusion showed about his
mouth.
“In the wars!” he repeated. “Weel--no jist a'thegether what ye micht
call i' the wars--though in a mainner o' speakin', gey near't. I had an
uncle oot wi' Balmerina; ye may hae heard tell o'm, a man o' tremendous
valour, as was generally al-ooed--Dugald Boyd, by my faither's side.
There's been naethin' but sogers in oor family since the be-ginnin'
o' time, and mony ane o' them's deid and dusty in foreign lands. It it
hadnae been for the want o' a half inch or thereby in the height o'
my heels “--here he stood upon his toes--“I wad hae been in the airmy
mysel'. It's the only employ for a man o' spunk, and there's spunk in
Mungo Boyd, mind I'm tellin' ye!”
“It is the most obvious thing in the world, good Mungo,” said
Montaiglon, smiling. “You eviscerate fish with the gusto of a
gladiator.”
And then an odd thing happened to relieve Mungo's embarrassment and end
incontinent his garrulity. Floating on the air round the bulge of the
turret came a strain of song in a woman's voice, not powerful, but
rich and sweet, young in its accent, the words inaudible but the air
startling to Count Victor, who heard no more than half a bar before
he had realised that it was the unfinished melody of the nocturnal
flageolet. Before he could comment upon so unexpected and surprising a
phenomenon, Mungo had dropped his gutting-knife and made with suspicious
rapidity for the entrance of the castle, without a word of explanation
or leave-taking.
“I become decidedly interested in Annapla,” said Montaiglon to himself,
witnessing this odd retreat, “and my host gives me no opportunity
of paying my homages. Malediction! It cannot be a wife; Bethune said
nothing of a wife, and then M. le Baron spoke of himself as a widower.
A domestic, doubtless; that will more naturally account for the ancient
fishmonger's fleet retirement. He goes to chide the erring Abigail.
Or--or--or the cunning wretch!” continued Montaiglon with new meaning in
his eyes, “he is perhaps the essential lover. Let the Baron at breakfast
elucidate the mystery.”
But the Baron at breakfast said never a word of the domestic economy
of his fortalice. As they sat over a frugal meal of oat porridge, the
poached fish, and a smoky, high-flavoured mutton ham, whose history the
Count was happy not to know, his host's conversation was either upon
Paris, where he had spent some months of sad expatriation, yawning at
its gaiety (it seemed) and longing for the woods of Doom; or upon the
plan of the search for the spy and double traitor.
Montaiglon's plans were simple to crudeness. He had, though he did not
say so, anticipated some assistance from Doom in identifying the object
of his search; but now that this was out of the question, he meant, it
appeared, to seek the earliest and most plausible excuse for removal
into the immediate vicinity of Argyll's castle, and on some pretext to
make the acquaintance of as many of the people there as he could, then
to select his man from among them, and push his affair to a conclusion.
“A plausible scheme,” said Doom when he heard it, “but contrived without
any knowledge of the situation. It's not Doom, M. le Count---oh no, it's
not Doom down by there; it's a far more kittle place to learn the outs
and ins of. The army and the law are about it, the one about as numerous
as the other, and if your Drimdarroch, as I take it, is a traitor on
either hand--to Duke Archie as well as to the king across the water,
taking the money of both as has happened before now, he'll be no
Drimdarroch you may wager, and not kent as such down there. Indeed, how
could he? for Petullo the writer body is the only Drimdarroch there
is to the fore, and he has a grieve in the place. Do you think this
by-named Drimdarroch will be going about cocking his bonnet over his
French amours and his treasons? Have you any notion that he will be the
more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French
gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too,
which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle
in a haystack was bairn's play compared to it.”
“If you sit down on the haystack you speedily find the needle, M. le
Baron,” said Montaiglon playfully. “In other words, trust my sensibility
to feel the prick of his presence whenever I get into his society. The
fact that he may suspect my object here will make him prick all the
quicker and all the harder.”
“Even yet you don't comprehend Argyll's court. It's not Doom, mind you,
but a place hotching with folk--half a hundred perhaps of whom have
travelled as this Drimdarroch has travelled, and in Paris too, and
just of his visage perhaps. Unless you challenged them all seriatim, as
Petullo would say, I see no great prospect.”
“I wish we could coax the fly here! That or something like it was what I
half expected to be able to do when Bethune gave me your address as that
of a landlord in the neighbourhood.”
Doom reddened, perhaps with shame at the altered condition of his state
in the house of his fathers. “I've seen the day,” said he--“I've seen
the day they were throng enough buzzing about Doom, but that was only
so long as honey was to rob with a fair face and a nice humming at the
robbery. Now that I'm a rooked bird and Doom a herried nest, they never
look the road I'm on.”
Mungo, standing behind his master's chair, gave a little crackling laugh
and checked it suddenly at the angry flare in his master's face.
“You're mighty joco!” said the Baron; “perhaps you'll take my friend and
me into your confidence;” and he frowned with more than one meaning at
the little-abashed retainer.
“Paurdon! paurdon!” said Mungo, every part of the chart-like face
thrilled with some uncontrollable sense of drollery, and he exploded in
laughter more violent than ever.
“Mungo!” cried his master in the accent of authority.
The domestic drew himself swiftly to attention.
“Mungo!” said his master, “you're a damned fool! In the army ye would
have got the triangle for a good deal less. Right about face.”
Mungo saluted and made the required retreat with a great deal less than
his usual formality.
“There's a bit crack in the creature after all,” said the Baron,
displaying embarrassment and annoyance, and he quickly changed the
conversation, but with a wandering mind, as Count Victor could not fail
to notice. The little man, to tell the truth, had somehow laughed at
the wrong moment for Count Victor's peace of mind. For why should he
be amused at the paucity of the visitors from Argyll's court to the
residence of Doom? Across the table at a man unable to conceal his
confusion Montaiglon stole an occasional glance with suspicion growing
on him irresistibly.
An inscrutable face was there, as many Highland faces were to him, even
among old friends in France, where Balhaldie, with the best possible
hand at a game of cards, kept better than any gambler he had ever known
before a mask of dull and hopeless resignation. The tongue was soft and
fair-spoken, the hand seemed generous enough, but this by all accounts
had been so even with Drimdarroch himself, and Drimdarroch was rotten to
the core.
“Very curious,” thought Montaiglon, making poor play with his braxy ham.
“Could Bethune be mistaken in this extraordinary Baron?” And he patched
together in his mind Mungo's laughter with the Baron's history as
briefly known to him, and the inexplicable signal and alarm of the
night.
“Your Mademoiselle Annapla seems to be an entrancing vocalist,” said he
airily, feeling his way to a revelation.
The Baron, in his abstraction, scarcely half comprehended.
“The maid,” he said, “just the maid!” and never a word more, but into a
new topic.
“I trust so,” thought the Count; “but the fair songster who signals
from her window and has clandestine meetings at midnight with masculine
voices must expect some incredulity on that point. Can it be possible
that here I have Bluebeard or Lothario? The laughter of the woman
seems to indicate that if here is not Lothario, here at all events is
something more than seems upon the surface. _Tonnerre de dieu!_ I become
suspicious of the whole breed of mountaineers. And not a word about last
night's alarm--that surely, in common courtesy, demands some explanation
to the guest whose sleep is marred.”
They went out together upon the mainland in the forenoon to make
inquiries as to the encounter with the Macfarlanes, of whose presence
not a sign remained. They had gone as they had come, without the
knowledge of the little community on the south of Doom, and the very
place among the bracken where the Count had dropped his bird revealed no
feather; the rain of the morning had obliterated every other trace. He
stood upon the very spot whence he had fired at the luckless robber, and
restored, with the same thrill of apprehension, the sense of mystery
and of dread that had hung round him as he stole the day before through
voiceless woods to the sound of noisy breakers on a foreign shore.
He saw again the brake nod in a little air of wind as if a form was
harboured, and the pagan rose in him--not the sceptic but the child
of nature, early and remote, lost in lands of silence and of omen in
dim-peopled and fantastic woods upon the verge of clamorous seas.
“_Dieu!_” said he with a shiver, turning to his host. “This is decidedly
not Verrays in the Rue Conde. I would give a couple of louis d'or for a
moment of the bustle of Paris.
“A sad place yon!” said Doom.
And back they went to the castle to play a solemn game of lansquenet.