The Chamberlain stood near the door with his hand in the bosom of his
coat, fingering the flageolet that was his constant companion even in
the oddest circumstances, and Count Victor went up to him, the button
concealed in his palm.
“Well, you are for going?” said Simon, more like one who puts a question
than states a position, for some hours of Count Victor's studied
contempt created misgivings.
“_Il y a terme à tout!_ And possibly monsieur will do me the honour to
accompany me so far as the avenue?”
“Sir!” said the Chamberlain.
“I have known men whose reputations were mainly a matter of clothes.
Monsieur is the first I have met whose character hung upon a single
button. Permit me to return your button with a million regards.”
He held the silver lozenge out upon his open hand.
“There are many buttons alike,” said the Chamberlain. Then he checked
himself abruptly and--“Well, damn it! I'll allow it's mine,” said he.
“I should expect just this charming degree of manly frankness from
monsieur. A button is a button, too, and a devilish serious thing when,
say, off a foil.”
He still held out the accusation on his open hand, and bowed with his
eyes on those of the other man.
At that MacTaggart lightly struck up the hand, and the button rolled
twinkling along the floor.
Count Victor glanced quickly round him to see that no one noticed. The
hall, but for some domestics, was left wholly to themselves. The ball
was over, the company had long gone, and he had managed to stay his own
departure by an interest feigned in the old armour that hung, with all
its gallant use accomplished, on the walls, followed by a game at cards
with three of the ducal _entourage_, two of whom had just departed. The
melancholy of early morning in a banquet-room had settled down, and all
the candles guttered in the draught of doors.
“I fancy monsieur will agree that this is a business calling for the
open air,” said Count Victor, no way disturbed by the rudeness. “I abhor
the stench of hot grease.”
“To-morrow--” began the Chamberlain, and Count Victor interrupted.
“To-morrow,” said he, “is for reflection; to-day is for deeds. Look! it
will be totally clear in a little.”
“I'm the last man who would spoil the prospect of a ploy,” said the
Chamberlain, changing his Highland sword for one of the rapiers on the
wall that was more in conformity with the Frenchman's weapon; “and yet
this is scarcely the way to find your Drimdarroch.”
“_Mais oui!_ Our Drimdarroch can afford to wait his turn. Drimdarroch
is wholly my affair; this is partly Doom's, though I, it seems, was made
the poor excuse for your inexplicable insolence.”
The Chamberlain slightly started, turned away, and smiled. “I was
right,” thought he. “Here's a fellow credits himself with being the
cause of jealousy.”
“Very well!” he said aloud at last, “this way,” and with the sword
tucked under his arm he led, by a side-door in the turret-angle, into
the garden.
Count Victor followed, stepping gingerly, for the snow was ankle-deep
upon the lawn, and his red-heeled dancing-shoes were thin.
“We know we must all die,” said he in a little, pausing with a shiver
of cold, and a glance about that bleak grey garden--“We know we must
all die, but I have a preference for dying in dry hose, if die I must.
Cannot monsieur suggest a more comfortable quarter for our little
affair?”
“Monsieur is not so dirty particular,” said the Chamberlain. “If I sink
my own rheumatism, it is not too much for you to risk your hose.”
“The main avenue--” suggested Count Victor.
“Is seen from every window of the ball-room, and the servants are still
there. Here is a great to-do about nothing!”
“But still, monsieur, I must protest on behalf of my poor hose,” said
Count Victor, always smiling.
“By God! I could fight on my bare feet,” cried the Chamberlain.
“Doubtless, monsieur; but there is so much in custom, _n'est ce pas?_
and my ancestors have always been used with boots.”
The Chamberlain overlooked the irony and glanced perplexed about him.
There was, obviously, no place near that was not open to the objection
urged. Everywhere the snow lay deep on grass and pathway; the trees were
sheeted ghosts, the chill struck through his own Highland brogues.
“Come!” said he at last, with a sudden thought; “the sand's the place,
though it's a bit to go,” and he led the way hurriedly towards the
riverside.
“One of us may go farther to-day and possibly fare worse,” said
Montaiglon with unwearied good-humour, stepping in his rear.
It was the beginning of the dawn. Already there was enough of it to show
the world of hill and wood in vast, vague, silent masses, to render
wan the flaming windows of the castle towers behind them. In the east a
sullen sky was all blotched with crimson, some pine-trees on the heights
were struck against it, intensely black, intensely melancholy, perhaps
because they led the mind to dwell on wild, remote, and solitary places,
the savagery of old forests, the cruel destiny of man, who has come
after and must go before the dead things of the wood. There was no wind;
the landscape swooned in frost.
“My faith! 'tis an odd and dolorous world at six o'clock in the
morning,” thought Count Victor; “I wish I were asleep in Cammercy and
all well.”
A young fallow-deer stood under an oak-tree, lifting its head to gaze
without dismay, almost a phantom; every moment the dawn spread wider; at
last the sea showed, leaden in the bay, mists revealed themselves upon
Ben Ime. Of sound there was only the wearying plunge of the cascades and
the roll of the shallows like tumbril-wheels on causeway as the river
ran below the arches.
“Far yet, monsieur?” cried Count Victor to the figure striding ahead,
and his answer came in curt accents.
“We'll be there in ten minutes. You want a little patience.”
“We shall be there, _par dieu!_ in time enough,” cried out Count Victor.
“'Tis all one to me, but the march is pestilent dull.”
“What! would ye have fiddlin' at a funeral?” asked the Chamberlain,
still without turning or slowing his step; and then, as though he had
been inspired, he drew out the flageolet that was ever his bosom friend,
and the astounded Frenchman heard the strains of a bagpipe march. It was
so incongruous in the circumstances that he must laugh.
“It were a thousand pities to kill so rare a personage,” thought he,
“and yet--and yet--'tis a villainous early morning.”
They passed along the river-bank; they came upon the sea-beach; the
Chamberlain put his instrument into his pocket and still led the way
upon the sand that lay exposed far out by the low tide. He stopped at a
spot clear of weed, flat and dry and firm almost as a table. It was
the ideal floor for an engagement, but from the uncomfortable sense
of espionage from the neighbourhood of a town that looked with all its
windows upon the place as it were upon a scene in a play-house. The
whole front of the town was not two hundred yards away.
“We shall be disturbed here, monsieur,” said Count Victor, hesitating as
the other put off his plaid and coat.
“No!” said Sim MacTaggart shortly, tugging at a belt, and yet Count
Victor had his doubts. He made his preparations, it is true, but always
with an apprehensive look at that long line of sleeping houses, whose
shutters--with a hole in the centre of each--seemed to stare down upon
the sand. No smoke, no flames, no sign of human occupance was there:
the sea-gull and the pigeon pecked together upon the door-steps or the
window-sills, or perched upon the ridges of the high-pitched roofs, and
a heron stalked at the outlet of a gutter that ran down the street. The
sea, quiet and dull, the east turned from crimson to grey; the mountains
streaming with mist----
“Cammercy after all!” said Count Victor to himself; “I shall wake in a
moment, but yet for a nightmare 'tis the most extraordinary I have ever
experienced.”
“I hope you are a good Christian,” said the Chamberlain, ready first and
waiting, bending his borrowed weapon in malignant arcs above his head.
“Three-fourths of one at least,” said Montaiglon; “for I try my best to
be a decent man,” and he daintily and deliberately turned up his sleeve
upon an arm as white as milk.
“I'm waiting,” said the Chamberlain.
“So! _en garde!_” said his antagonist, throwing off his hat and putting
up his weapon.
There was a tinkle of steel like the sound of ice afloat in a glass.
The town but seemed to sleep wholly; as it happened, there was one awake
in it who had, of all its inhabitants, the most vital interest in this
stern business out upon the sands. She had gone home from the ball rent
with vexation and disappointment; her husband snored, a mannikin of
parchment, jaundice-cheeked, scorched at the nose with snuff; and,
shuddering with distaste of her cage and her companion, she sat long
at the window, all her finery on, chasing dream with dream, and every
dream, as she knew, alas! with the inevitable poignancy of waking to the
truth. For her the flaming east was hell's own vestibule, for her the
greying dawn was a pallor of the heart, the death of hope. She sat
turning and turning the marriage-ring upon her finger, sometimes all
unconsciously essaying to slip it off, and tugging viciously at the
knuckle-joint that prevented its removal, and her eyes, heavy for sleep
and moist with sorrow, still could pierce the woods of Shira Glen
to their deep-most recesses and see her lover there. They roamed so
eagerly, so hungrily into that far distance, that for a while she failed
to see the figures on the nearer sand. They swam into her recognition
like wraiths upsprung, as it were, from the sand itself or exhaled upon
a breath from the sea: at first she could not credit her vision.
It was not with her eyes--those tear-blurred eyes--she knew him; it was
by the inner sense, the nameless one that lovers know; she felt the
tale in a thud of the heart and ran out with “Sim!” shrieked on her dumb
lips. Her gown trailed in the pools and flicked up the ooze of weed and
sand; a shoulder bared itself; some of her hair took shame and covered
it with a veil of dull gold.