It was only at the dawn, or the gloaming, or in night itself--and above
all in the night--that the castle of Doom had its tragic aspect. In
the sun of midday, as Count Victor convinced himself on the morrow of a
night with no alarms, it could be almost cheerful, and from the garden
there was sometimes something to be seen with interest of a human kind
upon the highway on the shore.
A solitary land, but in the happy hours people were passing to and fro
between the entrances to the ducal seat and the north. Now and then
bands of vagrants from the heights of Glencroe and the high Rest where
Wade's road bent among the clouds would pass with little or no appeal to
the hospitality of Doom, whose poverty they knew; now and then rustics
in red hoods, their feet bare upon the gravel, made for the town market,
sometimes singing as they went till their womanly voices, even in airs
unfamiliar and a language strange and guttural, gave to Count Victor
an echo of old mirth in another and a warmer land. Men passed on rough
short ponies; once a chariot with a great caleche roof swung on the
rutless road, once a company of red-coat soldiery shot like a gleam of
glory across the afternoon, moving to the melody of a fife and drum.
For the latter Mungo had a sour explanation. They were come, it seemed,
to attend a trial for murder. A clansman of the Duke's and a far-out
cousin (in the Highland manner of speaking) had been shot dead in the
country of Appin; the suspected assassin, a Stewart of course, was on
trial; the blood of families and factions was hot over the business, and
the Government was sending its soldiery to convoy James Stewart of the
Glen, after his conviction, back to the place of execution.
“But, _mon Dieu!_ he is yet to try, is he not?” cried Count Victor.
“Oh ay!” Mungo acquiesced, “but that doesna' maitter; the puir cratur
is as guid as scragged. The tow's aboot his thrapple and kittlin' him
already, I'll warrant, for his name's Stewart, and in this place I would
sooner be ca'd Beelzebub; I'd hae a better chance o' my life if I found
mysel' in trouble wi' a Campbell jury to try me.”
Montaiglon watched this little cavalcade of military march along the
road, with longing in his heart for the brave and busy outside world
they represented. He watched them wistfully till they had disappeared
round the horn of land he had stood on yesterday, and their fife and
drum had altogether died upon the air of the afternoon. And turning, he
found the Baron of Doom silent at his elbow, looking under his hat-brim
at the road.
“More trouble for the fesse checkey, Baron,” said he, indicating the
point whereto the troops had gone.
“The unluckiest blazon on a coat,” replied the castellan of Doom;
“trouble seems to be the part of every one who wears it. It's in a very
unwholesome quarter when it comes into the boar's den--”
“Boar's den?” repeated Montaiglon interrogatively.
“The head of the pig is his Grace's cognisance. Clan Diarmaid must have
got it first by raiding in some Appin stye, as Petullo my doer down-by
says. He is like most men of his trade, Petullo; he is ready to make his
treasonable joke even against the people who pay him wages, and I know
he gets the wages of the Duke as well as my fees. I'm going down to
transact some of the weary old business with him just now, and I'll hint
at your coming. A Bordeaux wine merchant--it will seem more like the
thing than the fish dealer.”
“And I know a good deal more about wine than about fish,” laughed Count
Victor, “so it will be safer.”
“I think you would be best to have been coming to the town when the
Macfarlanes attacked you, killed your horse, and chased you into my
place. That's the most plausible story we can tell, and it has the
virtue of being true in every particular, without betraying that Bethune
or friendship for myself was in any part of it.”
“I can leave it all to your astuteness,” said Montaiglon.
The Baron was absent, as he had suggested was possible, all day. The
afternoon was spent by Count Victor in a dull enough fashion, for even
Mungo seemed morose in his master's absence, perhaps overweighted by the
mysteries now left to his charge, disinclined to talk of anything except
the vast wars in which his ancestors had shone with blinding splendour,
and of the world beyond the confines of Doom. But even his store of
reminiscence became exhausted, and Count Victor was left to his own
resources. Back again to his seat on the rock he went, and again to the
survey of the mainland that seemed so strangely different a clime from
this where nothing dwelt but secrecy and decay.
In the afternoon the traffic on the highway had ceased, for the burgh
now held all of that wide neighbourhood that had leisure, or any excuse
of business to transact in the place where a great event was happening.
The few that moved in the sun of the day were, with but one exception,
bound for the streets; the exception naturally created some wonder on
the part of Count Victor.
For it was a man in the dress (to judge at a distance) of a gentleman,
and his action was singular. He was riding a jet-black horse of larger
stature than any that the rustics and farmers who had passed earlier
in the day bestrode, and he stood for a time half-hidden among trees
opposite the place where Count Victor reclined on a patch of grass among
whin-bushes. Obviously he did not see Montaiglon, to judge from the
calmness of his scrutiny, and assuredly it was not to the Frenchman
that, after a little, he waved a hand. Count Victor turned suddenly
and saw a responsive hand withdrawn from the window that had so far
monopolised all his interest in Doom's exterior.
Annapla had decidedly an industrious wooer, more constant than the sun
itself, for he seemed to shine in her heavens night and day.
There was, in a sense, but little in the incident, which was open to a
score of innocent or prosaic explanations, and the cavalier was spurring
back a few minutes later to the south, but it confirmed Count Victor's
determination to have done with Doom at the earliest, and off to where
the happenings of the day were more lucid.
At supper-time the Baron had not returned. Mungo came up to discover
Count Victor dozing over a stupid English book and wakened him to tell
him so, and that supper was on the table. He toyed with the food, having
no appetite, turned to his book again, and fell asleep in his chair.
Mungo again came in and removed the dishes silently, and looked
curiously at him--so much the foreigner in that place, so perjink in
his attire, so incongruous in his lace with this solitary keep of the
mountains. It was a strange face the servant turned upon him there at
the door as he retired to his kitchen quarters. And he was not gone long
when he came back with a woman who walked tiptoe into the doorway.
“That's the puir cratur,” said he; “seekin' for whit he'll never find,
like the man with the lantern playin' ki-hoi wi' honesty.”
She looked with interest at the stranger, said no word, but disappeared.
The peats sunk upon the hearth, crumbling in hearts of fire: on the
outer edges the ashes grew grey. The candles of coarse mould, stuck in a
rude sconce upon the wall above the mantelshelf, guttered to their end,
set aslant by wafts of errant wind that came in through the half-open
door and crevices of the window. It grew cold, and Montaiglon shook
himself into wakefulness. He sat up in his chair and looked about him
with some sense of apprehension, with the undescribable instinct of a
man who feels himself observed by eyes unseen, who has slept through an
imminently dangerous moment.
He heard a voice outside.
“M. le Baron,” he concluded. “Late, but still in time to say good-night
to the guest he rather cavalierly treats.” And he rose and went
downstairs to meet his host. The great door was ajar. He went into the
open air. The garden was utterly dark, for clouds obscured the
stars, and the air was laden with the saline odour of the wrack below
high-water mark. The tide was out. What he had expected was to see Mungo
and his master, but behind the castle where they should have been there
was no one, and the voices he heard had come from the side next the
shore. He listened a little and took alarm, for it was not one voice but
the voices of several people he heard, and in the muffled whispers of
men upon some dishonest adventure. At once he recalled the Macfarlanes
and the surmise of Baron Doom that in two nights they might be crying
their slogan round the walls that harboured their enemy. He ran hastily
back to the house, quickly resumed the sword that had proved little use
to him before, took up the more businesslike pistol that had spoiled the
features of the robber with the bladder-like head, and rushed downstairs
again.
“_Qui est la?_” he demanded as he passed round the end of the house and
saw dimly on the rock a group of men who had crossed upon the ebb. His
appearance was apparently unexpected, for he seemed to cause surprise
and a momentary confusion. Then a voice cried “Loch Sloy!” and the
company made a rush to bear him down.
He withdrew hastily behind the wall of the garden where he had them at
advantage. As he faced round, the assailants, by common consent, left
one man to do his business. He was a large, well-built man, so far
as might be judged in the gloom of the night, and he was attired in
Highland clothes. The first of his acts was to throw off a plaid that
muffled his shoulders; then he snapped a futile pistol, and fell back
upon his sword, with which he laid out lustily.
In the dark it was impossible to make pretty fighting of the encounter.
The Frenchman saw the odds too much against him, and realised the
weakness of his flank; he lunged hurriedly through a poor guard of his
opponent's, and pierced the fleshiness of the sword-arm. The man growled
an oath, and Count Victor retreated.
Mungo, with a blanched face, was trembling in the entrance, and a woman
was shrieking upstairs. The hall, lit by a flambeau that Mungo held
in one hand, while the other held a huge horse-pistol, looked like the
entrance to a dungeon,--something altogether sinister and ugly to the
foreigner, who had the uneasy notion that he fought for his life in
a prison. And the shrieks aloft rang wildly through the night like
something in a story he had once read, with a mad woman incarcerated,
and only to manifest herself when danger and mystery threatened.
“In ye come! in ye come!” cried the servant, trembling excessively till
the flambeau shook in his hand and his teeth rattled together. “In ye
come, and I'll bar the door.”
It was time, indeed, to be in; for the enemy leaped at the oak as Count
Victor threw it back upon its hinges, rather dubious of the bars that
were to withstand the weight without.
The sight of them reassured, however: they were no light bars Mungo
drew forth from their channels in the masonry, but huge black iron-bound
blocks a foot thick that ran in no staples, but could themselves secure
the ponderous portals against anything less than an assault with cannon.
It was obvious that the gentry outside knew the nature of this
obstruction, for, finding the bars out, they made no attempt to force
the door.
Within, the Count and servant looked at each other's faces--the latter
with astonishment and fear, the former with dumb questioning, and his
ear to the stair whence came the woman's alarms.
“The Baron tell't us there would be trouble,” stammered the retainer,
fumbling with the pistol so awkwardly that he endangered the body of his
fellow in distress. “Black Andy was never kent to forget an injury, and
I aye feared that the low tides would bring him and his gang aboot the
castle. Good God! do you hear them? It's a gey wanchancy thing this!” he
cried in terror, as the shout “Loch Sloy!” arose again outside, and the
sound of voices was all about the castle.
The woman within heard it too, for her cries became more hysterical than
ever.
“D--n ye, ye skirlin' auld bitch!” said the retainer, turning in
exasperation, “can ye no steeck your jaw, and let them dae the howlin'
outside?” But it was in a tone of more respect he shouted up the stair
some words of assurance.
Yet there was no abatement of the cries, and Montaiglon, less--to do
him justice--to serve his curiosity as to Annapla than from a natural
instinct to help a distressed woman, put a foot on the stair to mount.
“Na, na! ye mauna leave me here!” cried Mungo, plucking at his sleeve.
There was something besides fear in the appeal, there was alarm of
another sort that made Montaiglon pause and look the servitor in the
eyes. He found confusion there as well as alarm at the furore outside
and the imminent danger of the castle.
“I wish to God he was here himser,” said Mungo helplessly, but still he
did not relinquish his hold of Count Victor's sleeve.
“That need not prevent us comforting the lady,” said Count Victor,
releasing himself from the grasp.
“Let her alane, let her alane!” cried the servant distractedly,
following the Frenchman upstairs.
Count Victor paid no heed: he was now determined to unveil a mystery
that for all he knew might menace himself in this household of strange
midnight happenings. The cries of the woman came from the corridor he
had guessed her chamber to occupy, and to this he hastened. But he had
scarcely reached the corridor when the flambeau Mungo held was suddenly
blown out, and this effectively checked his progress. He turned for an
explanation.
“D--n that draught!” said Mungo testily, “it's blawn oot my licht.”
“We'll have to do without it, then,” said the Count, “but you must show
me the way to this shrieking woman.”
“A' richt,” said Mungo, “mind yer feet!” He passed before the Count and
cautiously led him up to the passage where the woman's cries, a little
less vehement, were still to be heard.
“There ye are! and muckle gude may it dae ye,” he said, stopping at a
door and pushing it open.
Count Victor stepped into darkness, thrust lightly as he went by the
servant's hand, and the door closed with a click behind him. He was a
prisoner! He had the humour to laugh softly at the conventionality of
the deception as he vainly felt in an empty room for a non-existing
doorhandle, and realised that Mungo had had his own way after all. The
servant's steps declined along the corridor and down the stair, with a
woman's to keep them company and a woman's sobs, all of which convinced
the Count that his acquaintance with Annapla was not desired by the
residents of Doom.