Count Victor heard the woman's lamentation die away in the pit of the
stair before he ceased to wonder at the sound and had fully realised the
unpleasantness of his own incarceration. It was the cries of the outer
assault that roused him from mere amazement to a comprehension of the
dangers involved in his being thus penned in a cell and his enemies kept
at bay by some wooden bars and a wooden-head. He felt with questioning
fingers along the walls, finding no crevice to suggest outer air till
he reached the window, and, alas! an escape from a window at that height
seemed out of the question without some machinery at hand.
“I suspected the little clown's laughter,” said he to himself. “The key
of the mystery lies between him and this absurd Baron, and I begin
to guess at something of complicity on the part of M. Bethune. A
malediction on the whole tribe of mountaineers! The thing's like a play;
I've seen far more improbable circumstances in a book. I am shot at in
a country reputed to be well-governed even to monotony; a sombre host
puzzles, a far too frank domestic perplexes; magic flutes and midnight
voices haunt this infernal hold; the conventional lady of the drama is
kept in the background with great care, and just when I am on the point
of meeting her, the perplexing servitor becomes my jailer. But yes,
it is a play; surely it is a play; or else I am in bed in Cammercy
suffering from one of old Jeanne's heavy late suppers. It is then that I
must waken myself into the little room with the pink hangings.”
He raised the point of the sword to prick his finger, more in a humorous
mood than with any real belief that it was all a dream, and dropped it
fast as he felt a gummy liquor clotting on the blade.
“_Grand Dieu!_” said he softly, “I have perhaps pricked some one else
to-night into his eternal nightmare, and I cannot prick myself out of
one.”
The noise of the men outside rose louder; a gleam of light waved upon
the wall of the chamber, something wan and elusive, bewildering for
a moment as if it were a ghost; from the clamour he could distinguish
sentences in a guttural tongue. He turned to the window--the counterpart
of the one in his own bedroom, but without a pane of glass in its narrow
space. Again the wan flag waved across the wall, more plainly the cries
of the robbers came up to him. They had set a torch flaring on the
scene. It revealed the gloomy gable-end of Doom with a wild, a menacing
illumination, deepening the blackness of the night beyond its influence,
giving life to shadows that danced upon rock and grass. The light, held
high by the man Count Victor had wounded, now wrapped to his eyes in
a plaid, rose and fell, touched sometimes on the mainland showing the
bracken and the tree, sometimes upon the sea to show the wave, frothy
from its quarrel with the fissured rock, making it plain that Doom was a
ship indeed, cast upon troubled waters, cut off from the gentle world.
But little for the sea or for the shore had Count Victor any interest;
his eyes were all for the wild band who clamoured about the flambeau.
They wore such a costume as he had quarrelled with on his arrival; they
cried “Loch Sloy!” with something of theatrical effect, and “Out
with the gentleman! out with Black Andy's murderer!” they demanded in
English.
He craned his head out at the Window and watched the scene. The tall man
who had personally assailed him seemed to lead the band in all except
their clamour, working eagerly, directing in undertones. They had
brought a ladder from the shore, apparently provided for such an
emergency, and placed it against the wall, with a view to an escalade. A
stream of steaming water shot down upon the first who ventured upon the
rounds, and he fell back with ludicrous whimperings. Compelled by the
leader, another ventured on the ladder, and the better to watch his
performance Count Victor leaned farther out at his window, secure from
observation in the darkness. As he did so, he saw for the first time
that on his right there was a lighted window he could almost touch
with his hand as he leaned over. It flashed upon him that here was
the woman's room, and that on the deep moulding running underneath the
windows he could at some little risk gain it, probably to find its door
open, and thus gain the freedom Mungo had so unexpectedly taken from
him. He crept out upon the ledge, only then to realise the hazards of
such a narrow footing. It seemed as he stood with his hands yet grasping
the sides of the window he sought to escape by, that he could never
retain his balance sufficiently to reach the other in safety. The
greatest of his physical fears--greater even than that of drowning which
sometimes whelmed him in dreams and on ships--was the dread of empty
space; a touch of vertigo seized him; the enemy gathered round the torch
beneath suddenly seemed elves, puny impossible things far off, and he
almost slipped into their midst. But he dragged back his senses. “We
must all die,” he gasped, “but we need not be precipitate about the
business,” and shut his eyes as he stood up, and with feet upon the
moulding stretched to gain grip of the other window. Something fell away
below his right foot and almost plunged him into space. With a terrific
effort he saved himself from that fate, and his senses, grown of a
sudden to miraculous acuteness, heard the crumbled masonry he had
released thud upon the patch of grass at the foot of the tower,
apprising the enemy of his attempt. A wild commingling of commands
and threats came up to him; the night seemed something vast beyond all
former estimates, a swinging and giddy horror; the single star that
peered through the cloud took to airy dancing, a phantom of the evening
heavens; again he might have fallen, but the material, more deadly,
world he was accustomed to manifested itself for his relief and his
salvation. Through the night rang a pistol shot, and the ball struck
against the wall but an inch or two from his head.
“Merci beaucoup!” he said aloud. “There is nothing like a pill,” and
his grasp upon the sides of the illuminated window was quite strong and
confident as he drew himself towards it. He threw himself in upon
the floor just in time to escape death from half a dozen bullets that
rattled behind him.
Safe within, he looked around in wonder. What he had come upon was not
what he had expected,--was, indeed, so incongruous with the cell next
door and the general poverty of the castle as a whole that it seemed
unreal; for here was a trim and tasteful boudoir lit by a silver
lamp, warmed by a charcoal fire, and giving some suggestion of dainty
womanhood by a palpable though delicate odour of rose-leaves conserved
in pot-pourri. Tapestry covered more than three-fourths of the wall,
swinging gently in the draught from the open window, a harpischord stood
in a corner, a couch that had apparently been occupied stood between the
fireplace and the door, and a score of evidences indicated gentility and
taste.
“Annapla becomes more interesting,” he reflected, but he spent no time
in her boudoir; he made to try the door. It was locked; nor did he
wonder at it, though in a cooler moment he might have done so. Hurriedly
he glanced about the room for something to aid him to open the door, but
there was nothing to suit his purpose. In his search his eye fell upon
a miniature upon the mantelshelf--the work, as he could tell by its
technique and its frame, of a French artist. It was the presentment of
a gentleman in the Highland dress, adorned, as was the manner of some
years back before the costume itself had become discredited, with
fripperies of the mode elsewhere--a long scalloped waistcoat, a deep
ruffled collar, the shoes buckled, and the hair _en queue_,--the
portrait of a man of dark complexion, distinguished and someways
pleasant.
“The essential lover of the story,” said Count Victor, putting it down.
“Now I know my Annapla is young and lovely. We shall see--we shall see!”
He turned to the door to try its fastenings with his sword, found the
task of no great difficulty, for the woodwork round the lock shared the
common decay of Doom, and with the silver lamp to light his steps, he
made his way along the corridor and down the stair. It was a strange and
romantic spectacle he made moving thus through the darkness, the lamp
swaying his shadow on the stairway as he descended, and he could have
asked for no more astonishment in the face of his jailer than he found
in Mungo's when that domestic met him at the stair-foot.
Mungo was carrying hot water in a huge kettle. He put down the vessel
with a startled jolt that betrayed his fright.
“God be aboot us! Coont, ye near gied me a stroke there.”
“Oh, I demand pardon!” said Count Victor ironically. “I forgot that a
man of your age should not be taken by surprise.”
“My age!” repeated Mungo, with a tone of annoyance. “No' sae awfu'
auld either. At my age my grandfaither was a sergeant i' the airmy, and
married for the fourth time.”
“Only half his valour seems to run in the blood,” said Count Victor.
Then, more sternly, “What did you mean by locking me up there?”
Mungo took up the kettle and placed it to the front of him, with some
intuition that a shield must be extemporised against the sword that the
Frenchman had menacing in his hand. The action was so droll and futile
that, in spite of his indignation, Count Victor had to smile; and this
assured the little domestic, though he felt chagrin at the ridicule
implied.
“Jist a bit plan o' my ain, Coont, to keep ye oot o' trouble, and I'm
shair ye'll excuse the leeberty. A bonny-like thing it wad be if the
maister cam' hame and foun' the Macfarlanes wer oot on the ran-dan and
had picked ye oot o' Doom like a wulk oot o' its shell. It wisna like as
if ye were ane o' the ordinar garrison, ye ken; ye were jist a kin' o'
veesitor--”
“And it was I they were after,” said Count Victor, “which surely gave me
some natural interest in the defence.”
“Ye were safer to bide whaur ye were; and hoo ye got oot o't 's mair
than I can jalouse. We hae scalded aff the rogues wi' het water, and if
they're to be keepit aff, I'll hae to be unco gleg wi' the kettle.”
As he said these words he saw, apparently for the first time, with
a full understanding of its significance, the lamp in Count Victor's
hands. His jaw fell; he put down the kettle again helplessly, and, in
trembling tones, “Whaur did ye get the lamp?” said he.
“_Ah, mon vieux!_” cried Count Victor, enjoying his bewilderment. “You
should have locked the lady's door as well as mine. 'Art a poor warder
not to think of the possibilities in two cells so close to each other.”
“Cells!” cried Mungo, very much disturbed. “Cells! quo' he,” looking
chapfallen up the stairway, as if for something there behind his escaped
prisoner.
“And now you will give me the opportunity of paying my respects to your
no doubt adorable lady.”
“Eh!” cried Mungo, incredulous. A glow came to his face. He showed the
ghost of a mischievous smile. “Is't that way the lan' lies? Man, ye're
a dour birkie!” said he; “but a wilf u' man maun hae his way, and, if
naething less'll dae ye, jist gang up to yer ain chaumer, and ye'll find
her giein' the Macfarlanes het punch wi' nae sugar till't.”
The statement was largely an enigma to Count Victor, but he understood
enough to send him up the stairs with an alacrity that drove Mungo, in
his rear, into silent laughter. Yet the nearer he came to his door the
slower grew his ascent. At first he had thought but of the charming
lady, the vocalist, and the recluse. The Baron's share in the dangerous
mystery of Doom made him less scrupulous than he might otherwise have
been as to the punctilio of a domestic's introduction to one apparently
kept out of his way for reasons best known to his host; and he advanced
to the encounter in the mood of the adventurer, Mungo in his rear
beholding it in his jaunty step, in the fingers that pulled and peaked
the moustachio, and drew forth a somewhat pleasing curl that looked well
across a temple. But a more sober mood overcame him before he had got
to the top of the stair. The shouts of the besieging party outside
had declined and finally died away; the immediate excitement of the
adventure, which with Mungo and the unknown lady he was prepared to
share, was gone. He began to realise that there was something ludicrous
in the incident that had kept him from making her acquaintance half
an hour ago, and reflected that she might well have some doubt of
his courage and his chivalry. Even more perturbing was the sudden
recollection of the amused laughter that had greeted his barefooted
approach to Doom through two or three inches of water, and at the open
door he hung back dubious.
“Step in; it's your ain room,” cried Mungo, struggling with his
kettle; “and for the Lord's sake mind your mainners and gie her a guid
impression.”
It was the very counsel to make a Montaiglon bold.
He entered; a woman was busy at the open window; he stared in amazement
and chagrin.