The night brooded on the Highlands when Count Victor reached the
shore. Snow and darkness clotted in the clefts of the valleys opening
innumerably on the sea, but the hills held up their heads and thought
among the stars--unbending and august and pure, knowing nothing at all
of the glens and shadows. It was like a convocation of spirits. The
peaks rose everywhere white to the brows and vastly ruminating. An
ebbing tide too, so that the strand was bare. Upon the sands where there
had been that folly of the morning the waves rolled in an ascending
lisp, spilled upon at times with gold when the decaying moon--a
halbert-head thrown angrily among Ossian's flying ghosts, the warrior
clouds--cut through them sometimes and was so reflected in the sea. The
sea was good; good to hear and smell; the flying clouds were grateful to
the eye; the stars--he praised God for the delicious stars not in words
but in an exultation of gratitude and affection, yet the mountain-peaks
were most of all his comforters.
He had run from the castle as if the devil had been at his red heels,
with that ridiculous coat flapping its heavily braided skirts about
his calves; passed through snow-smothered gardens, bordered boding
dark plantations of firs, leaped opposing fell-dykes whence sheltering
animals ran terrified at the apparition, and he came out upon the
seaside at the bay as one who has overcome a nightmare and wakens to see
the familiar friendly glimmer of the bedroom fire.
A miracle! and mainly worked by a glimpse of these blanched hills. For
he knew now they were an inseparable part of his memory of Olivia, _her_
hills, _her_ sheltering sentinels, the mere sight of them Doom's orison.
Though he had thought of her so much when he shivered in the fosse, it
had too often been as something unattainable, never to be seen again
perhaps, a part of his life past and done with. An incubus rode his
chest, though he never knew till now, when it fled at the sight of
Olivia's constant friends the mountains. Why, the girl lived! her home
was round the corner there dark-jutting in the sea! He could, with some
activity, be rapping at her father's door in a couple of hours!
“_Grace de Dieu!_” said he, “let us leave trifles and go home.”
It was a curious sign of his preoccupation, ever since he had escaped
from his imprisonment, that he should not once have thought on where
he was to fly to till this moment when the hills inspired. “Silence,
thought, calm, and purity, here they are!” they seemed to tell him, and
by no means unattainable. Where (now that he had time to think of it)
could he possibly go to-night but to the shelter of Doom? Let the morrow
decide for itself. _À demain les affaires sérieuses!_ Doom and--Olivia.
What eyes she had, that girl! They might look upon the assailant of her
wretched lover with anything but favour; yet even in anger they were
more to him than those of all the world else in love.
Be sure Count Victor was not standing all the time of these reflections
shivering in the snow. He had not indulged a moment's hesitation since
ever he had come out upon the bay, and he walked through the night as
fast as his miserable shoes would let him.
The miles passed, he crossed the rivers that mourned through hollow
arches and spread out in brackish pools along the shore. Curlews piped
dolorously the very psalm of solitude, and when he passed among
the hazel-woods of Strone and Achnatra, their dark recesses belled
continually with owls. It was the very pick of a lover's road: no
outward vision but the sombre masses of the night, the valleys of snow,
and the serene majestic hills to accompany that inner sight of the
woman; no sounds but that of solemn waters and the forest creatures to
make the memory of her words the sweeter. A road for lovers, and he
was the second of the week, though he did not know it. Only, Simon
MacTaggart had come up hot-foot on his horse, a trampling conqueror (as
he fancied), the Count trudged shamefully undignified through snow
that came high upon the silken stockings, and long ago had made his
dancing-shoes shapeless and sodden. But he did not mind that; he had a
goal to make for, an ideal to cherish timidly; once or twice he found
himself with some surprise humming Gringoire's song, that surely should
never go but with a light heart.
And in the fulness of time he approached the point of land from which he
knew he could first see Doom's dark promontory if it were day. There his
steps slowed. Somehow it seemed as if all his future fortune depended
upon whether or not a light shone through the dark to greet him. Between
him and the sea rolling in upon a spit of the land there was--of all
things!--a herd of deer dimly to be witnessed running back and forward
on the sand as in some confusion at his approach; at another time the
thing should have struck him with amazement, but now he was too busy
with his speculation whether Doom should gleam on him or not to study
this phenomenon of the frosty winds. He made a bargain with himself: if
the isle was black, that must mean his future fortune; if a light was
there, however tiny, it was the star of happy omen, it was--it was--it
was several things he dared not let himself think upon for fear of
immediate disappointment.
For a minute he paused as if to gather his courage and then make a dash
round the point.
_Ventre Dieu!_ Blackness! His heart ached.
And then, as most men do in similar circumstances, he decided that the
test was a preposterous one. Why, faith! should he relinquish hope of
everything because--
What! the light was there. Like a fool he had misjudged the distance in
the darkness and had been searching for it in the wrong place. It was
so bright that it might be a star estrayed, a tiny star and venturesome,
gone from the keeping of the maternal moon and wandered into the wood
behind Doom to tangle in the hazel-boughs. A dear star! a very gem of
stars! a star more precious than all the others in that clustered sky,
because it was the light of Olivia's window. A plague on all the others
with their twinkling search among the clouds for the little one lost!
he wished it had been a darker night that he might have only this one
visible.
By rights he should be weary and cold, and the day's events should
trouble him; but to tell the truth, he was in a happy exaltation all the
rest of the way. Sometimes the star of hope evaded him as he followed
the bending path, trees interposing; he only ran the faster to get it
into his vision again, and it was his beacon up to the very walls of
Doom.
The castle took possession of the night.
How odd that he should have fancied that brave tower arrogant; it was
tranced in the very air of friendliness and love--the fairy residence,
the moated keep of all the sweet old tales his nurse was used to tell
him when he was a child in Cam-mercy.
And there he had a grateful memory of the ringleted middle-aged lady
who had alternately whipped and kissed him, and in his night's terrors
soothed him with tales. “My faith!” said he, “thou didst not think thy
Perrault's 'Contes des Fées' might, twenty years after, have so close an
application to a woman and a tower in misty Albion.”
He walked deliberately across to the rock, went round the tower, stood
a moment in the draggled arbour--the poor arbour of dead ideals. Doom,
that once was child of the noisy wars, was dead as the Château d'Arques
save for the light in its mistress's window. Poor old shell! and yet
somehow he would not have had it otherwise.
He advanced and rapped at the door. The sound rang in the interior, and
presently Mungo's shuffling steps were heard and his voice behind the
door inquiring who was there.
“A friend,” answered Count Victor, humouring the little old man's fancy
for affairs of arms.
“A friend!” repeated Mungo with contempt. “A man on a horse has aye
hunders o' frien's in the gutter, as Annapla says, and it wad need to be
somethin' rarer to get into Doom i' the mirk o' nicht. I opened the
door to a frien' the ither nicht and he gripped me by the craig and fair
choked me afore I could cry a barley.”
“_Peste!_ Do not flatter my English so much as to tell me you do not
recognise Count Victor's accent through a door.”
“Lord keep 's!” cried Mungo, hastily drawing his bolts. “Hae ye changed
ye'r mind already and left the inns? It's a guid thing for your wife
ye're no marrit, or she wad be the sorry woman wi' sic a shiftin' man.”
His astonishment was even greater when Count Victor stood before him a
ludicrous figure with his too ample coat.
“Dinna tell me ye hae come through the snaw this nicht like that!”
he cried incredulous, holding up his candle the better to examine the
figure.
Count Victor laughed, and for an answer simply thrust forth a sopping
foot to his examination.
“Man, ye must hae been hot on't!” said the servant, shaking his cowled
head till the tassel danced above his temple. “Ye'r shoon's fair steeped
wi' water. Water's an awfu' thing to rot ye'r boots; I aye said if it
rotted ane's boots that way, whit wad it no' dae to ane's stamach? Oh,
sirs! sirs! this is becomin' the throng hoose, wi' comin's and goin's
and raps and roars and collie-shangies o' a' kin's. If it wasna me was
the canny gaird o't it's Himsel' wad hae to flit for the sake o' his
nicht's sleep.”
“You behold, Mungo, the daw in borrowed plumes,” said Count Victor as
the door was being barred again. “I hope the daw felt more comfortable
than I do in mine,” and he ruefully surveyed his apparel. “Does Master
Mungo recognise these peacock feathers?”
Mungo scanned the garment curiously.
“It's gey like ane I've seen on a bigger man,” he answered.
“And a better, perhaps, thought my worthy Mungo. I remember me that
our peacock was a diplomatist and had huge interest in your delightful
stories.”
A movement of Mungo's made him turn to see the Baron standing behind him
a little bewildered at this apparition.
“_Failte!_” said the Baron, “and I fancy you would be none the waur, as
we say, of the fireside.”
He went before him into the _salle_, taking Mungo's candle. Mungo was
despatched for Annapla, and speedily the silent abigail of visions was
engaged upon that truly Gaelic courtesy, the bathing of the traveller's
feet. The Baron considerately made no inquiries; if it was a caprice of
Count Victor's to venture in dancing shoes and a borrowed jacket through
dark snow-swept roads, it was his own affair. And the Count was so much
interested in the new cheerfulness of his host (once so saturnine and
melancholy) that he left his own affairs unmentioned for a while as the
woman worked. It was quite a light-hearted recluse this, compared with
that he had left a week ago.
“I am not surprised you found yon place dull,” at the last hazarded the
Baron.
“_Comment?_”
“Down-by, I mean. I'm glad myself always to get home out of it at this
season. When the fishers are there it's all my fancy, but when it does
not smell of herring, the stench of lawyers' sheepskins gets on the top
and is mighty offensive to any man that has had muckle to do with them.”
“Dull!” repeated Count Victor, now comprehending; “I have crowded more
experience into the past four-and-twenty hours than I might meet in a
month anywhere east of Calais. I have danced with a duchess, fought a
stupid duel, with a town looking on for all the world as if it were a
performance in a circus with lathen weapons, moped in a dungeon, broken
through the same, stolen a coat, tramped through miles of snow in a pair
of pantoufles, forgotten to pay the bill at the inn, and lost my baggage
and my reputation--which latter I swear no one in these parts will be
glad to pick up for his own use. Baron, I'll be shot if your country is
not bewitched. My faith! what happenings since I came here expecting to
be killed with _ennui!_ I protest I shall buy a Scots estate and ask
all my friends over here to see real life. Only they must have good
constitutions; I shall insist on them having good constitutions. And
there's another thing--it necessitates that they must have so kind a
friend as Monsieur le Baron and so hospitable a house as Doom to fall
back on when their sport comes to a laughable termination, as mine has
done to-night.”
“Ah! then you have found your needle in the haystack after all?” cried
Doom, vastly interested.
“Found the devil!” cried Montaiglon, a shade of vexation in his
countenance, for he had not once that day had a thought of all that had
brought, him into Scotland. “The haystack must be stuck full of needles
like the bran of a pin-cushion.”
“And this one, who is not the particular needle named Drimdarroch?”
“I shall give you three guesses, M. le Baron.”
Doom reflected, pulled out his nether lip with his fingers, looking hard
at his guest.
“It is not the Chamberlain?”
“_Peste!_” thought the Count, “can the stern unbending parent have
relented? You are quite right,” he said; “no other. But it is not a
matter of the most serious importance. I lost my coat and the gentleman
lost a little blood. I have the best assurances that he will be on foot
again in a week or two, by which time I hope--at all events I expect--to
be out of all danger of being invited to resume the entertainment.”
“In the meantime here's Doom, yours--so long as it is mine--while
it's your pleasure to bide in it if you fancy yourself safe from
molestation,” said the Baron.
“As to that I think I may be tranquil. I have, there too, the best
assurances that the business will be hushed up.”
“So much the better, though in any case this seems to have marred your
real engagements here in the matter of Drimdarroch.”
Count Victor's turn it was to feel vexation now. He pulled his moustache
and reddened. “As to that, Baron,” said he, “I pray you not to despise
me, for I have to confess that my warmth in the mission that brought me
here has abated sadly. You need not ask me why. I cannot tell you. As
for me and my affair, I have not forgotten, nor am I likely wholly to
forget; but your haystack is as _difficile_ as you promised it should
be, and--there are divers other considerations. It necessitates that I
go home. There shall be some raillery at my expense doubtless--_Ciel!_
how Louis my cousin will laugh!--but no matter.”
He spoke a little abstractedly, for he saw a delicate situation
approaching. He was sure to be asked--once Annapla's service was
over--what led to the encounter, and to give the whole story frankly
involved Olivia's name unpleasantly in a vulgar squabble. He saw for the
first time that he had been wholly unwarranted in taking the defence of
the Baron's interests into his own hands. Could he boldly intimate
that in his opinion jealousy of himself had been the spring of the
Chamberlain's midnight attacks on the castle of Doom? That were
preposterous! And yet that seemed the only grounds that would justify
his challenging the Chamberlain.
When Annapla was gone then Doom got the baldest of histories. He was
encouraged to believe that all this busy day of adventure had been due
to a simple quarrel after a game of cards, and where he should have
preferred a little more detail he had to content himself with a humorous
narrative of the escape, the borrowing of the coat, and the interview
with the Duchess.
“And now with your permission, Baron, I shall go to bed,” at last said
Count Victor. “I shall sleep to-night, like a _sabot_. I am, I know, the
boldest of beggars for your grace and kindness. It seems I am fated in
this country to make free, not only with my enemy's coat, but with my
dear friend's domicile as if it were an inn. To-morrow, Baron, I shall
make my dispositions. The coat can be returned to its owner none the
worse for my use of it, but I shall not so easily be able to square
accounts with you.”